RFID manages vast amounts of documents and simplifies inventories

Ewa Kowalska works as a claims adjustor for an insurance company in Prague. Each week, dozens of paper files cross her desk as they make their way through the claims process.

Before her company introduced an RFID-based file management system, Ewa would spend an hour each morning rounding up files from her colleagues’ desks. If a file was misplaced, it could take days to locate it, keeping back Ewa and her fellow workers and putting everyone in a bad mood.

Now, the company has placed RFID tags on 25,000 file folders containing important original documentation, such as accident reports, accident sketches, photographs and contracts. Each time Ewa brings a file to her desk to work on it, she moves the file over a mouse-pad size RFID reader. The system is then updated with the actual physical location of the file and the unique identification number in the tag is linked to the case number.

No more searching through heaps of paper

If another employee needs to work on the file, he goes to a special screen at a computer terminal and enters the case number. The system then tells him to look for the file on Ewa’s desk.

Another example: with RFID, the annual inventory process in shops and companies, as required by the tax authorities, is now so much simpler. Employees no longer have to go through the frustrating and tedious task of counting bars of chocolate or boxes of pens or tallying up a list of computer serial numbers. Companies are RFID tagging the items that need to be accounted for, reducing the time required for taking inventory dramatically. Employees walk past the items with a handheld RFID reader and the necessary information is collected.

In many different ways, RFID is making work more enjoyable and convenient: files can be located quickly and at inventory time there’s no more bending and kneeling to find a sticker with a serial number at the back of a computer. Now, that’s progress!