The past 10 years has seen the development of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) rocket, making it easier for all companies to track and manage their fixed asset management. However, RFID is still not completly optimised for use. At the moment the technology is very expensive to implement so it's been restricted to expensive and high priority items. The ideal use of RFID would be to track individual items off the shop shelves.

RFID is a form of tracking, very similar to barcodes. A barcode is a simple visible data storing tag that is read by a scanner device. An RFID tag is a type of chip that's attached to the asset and store data about the item, this tag is then activated and read by an RFID reader device. The reader sends out radio waves to connect to the chip and retrieve the data about the item.

Although, radio frequency idenfitication for asset tracking is still in its early stages of adoption, a significant amount of companies within the United States are already taking advantage of the RFID tagging for other purposes. A few of the services that have started using RFID tagging include mass transit ticketing, payment methods, libraries, museums and new passports. A great deal of the companies using this method of tracking are government controlled.

Although the majority of companies know why RFID is so important, but they haven't got the money to buy into it. In the last few years, tracking your assets has become a vital part of business. However, many companies find auditing their assets costly as it can slow their business down. Quite a few companies find that they have missed a number of their items after auditing.

By adding these tags to your assets, you can then track hundreds of your items all at the same time, remotely. This helps you to manage your assets more simply.

Just one company that is using RFID tech is Unilever. They have added the RFID tags to over 20,000 assets across their production lines. These tags make it easier for them to audit their assets remotely, if this was done manually, they would end up shutting down the production process.

This is just one example of where RFID can help your business save money. There are a wide range of examples. Another example would be in the emergancy services, allowing them to track vital pieces of equipment, saving time. It also ensures that a rescue vehicle doesn't travel to an incident without the required equipment.

However, currently tracking using RFID is not cheap. With the more advanced tags costing around $50, tracking your assets efficiently is not check. Hopefully the costs of the tags will fall as the money needed to develop them does. Once more industries adopt this method of asset tracking, fixed asset tracking programs will become more widely used.