Markets & Applications
In addition to the traditional warehouse and distribution center supply chain applications at the case and pallet levels, several vertical markets have found particularly compelling drivers for improving their products, distribution, service, safety, and inventory management using UHF Gen 2 RFID solutions powered by Impinj®. Here are a few of them:
Pharmaceutical Solutions
Impinj pioneered the application of near-field UHF for item-level tagging. Nowhere is the power of this innovation more apparent than in the pharmaceuticals industry. In pharmaceutical manufacturing and fill-line applications, a near-field UHF Gen 2 RFID solution comprising Impinj's Speedway reader and Owens-Illinois (O-I)'s item-level embedded RFID tags powered by Impinj's Monza chips, achieves 100% results when reading and writing tags at high speed on pharmaceutical bottles. The UHF Gen 2 system writes the 96-bit electronic product codes (EPC) at rates exceeding 600 tags per minute on bottles containing the four most common dose types: liquids, gel caps, solids, and powder. The typical fill line operates at 300 to 250 bottles per minute, thus the Impinj solution performs at 2X the system requirement. Further, the system developed by Impinj and Owens-Illinois (O-I) flawlessly reads 600 tags per minute on cases containing 48 individually tagged bottles and a case-level tag.
The focus on UHF Gen 2 RFID as part of the packaging, and not a standalone label attached to the packaging, is a true breakthrough in item-level RFID implementation, providing remarkable performance and reliability.
Retail Tagging and Point-of-Sale Solutions
Impinj innovations in RFID systems for retail applications will be appearing soon in the forms of smart shelves, smart racks, automated point-of-sale terminals, and other RFID-enabled fixtures. In each of these cases, the read capture zones must be well controlled, such that reads of item-filled totes and carts moving through checkout portals, as well as merchandise stacked on shelves or apparel hanging on racks, occur only within the area(s) of interest. Impinj pioneered, and continues to develop, high performance reader antennas featuring form factors and RF properties ideally suited to these highly specialized applications.