Get it Tagged! – Soon you’ll have to


If you don’t know what ‘Arphids’ are now, you probably didn’t hear about bar codes until the 1990s. An Arphid is the 'tech' word for RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification) and if you listen to certain individuals, they are going to ‘change everything’.
An RFID is a small, cheap lump of electronics with an antenna and they are used as tags which are becoming important tools to help companies keep control of their supply chains and inventory. Software toolkits from major vendors and cheaper ways of producing tags mean RFID is now starting to appear in some unexpected places.


We’re a little while away from seeing RFIDs on jeans and light bulbs, but the chances are that the box in which they arrived at the store was tracked by a RFID. They're working behind the scenes - helping track items through the convolutions of the supply chain, and making sure that palettes and containers are returned to just where they belong. RFID tags even help in security, with banks using them to track packages of bonds. It's a technology that links security and location control.

Tagging also helps track problems with specific batches of hardware, as it gives complete traceability of manufacture. That way batches built with suspect components can be quickly recalled and faults rectified before they cause problems for most users.
For more on this subject, please read Inside IT in The Guardian Unlimited.