With the rapid evolution of manufacturing technology it’s pretty tough to keep up with the latest and greatest products designed to help automate the manufacturing process. The big “buzz” surrounding RFID about a decade or so ago was Wal-Mart declaring that their top one hundred vendors would be required to tag every single item with an RFID tag. Well, that never came to fruition. Around the same time there was a lot of talk about active RFID systems as a new technology for work in process. Well, that didn’t ever quite materialize either.
While the active systems certainly have made an impact on yard and container management applications, passive RFID still rules the roost in WIP. In essence, the main difference between passive and active RFID is active tags require a battery which helps 
to yield a much larger read range. One can imagine the benefits of an extremely long read range in a shipping yard, but on a production line the engineers are just fine with mounting the read head within a few inches of the work pieces. Eighty to ninety percent of the new WIP applications that we deal with still require High Frequency (HF) technology. The other ten to twenty percent are using Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) which is still passive technology, just a longer read range. This is usually the case where the actual item being built is very large and it is very difficult to place a HF reader within inches of the work piece.
Ultimately, using active RFID for work in process is similar to using a sledge hammer to put a nail in a wall. It is simply overkill. So, while automation technology is on a course of change, it is clear that some of the “old faithful” equipment is still adequately addressing the needs on the production line.
To learn more about active vs. passive RFID tags, click here.
