Zebra's Industry Solutions can give your business a competitive advantage by connecting people, assets and data to help you make better decisions.
Scale and energize your retail strategy with a digital backbone that unifies your team, informs priorities and drives results with Zebra's retail technology solutions.
Zebra’s mobile computing, scanning, and printing solutions connect each operational area in your warehouse to give you the agility to realize transformational gains.
Zebra's healthcare technology solutions provide patient identity management, mobile health devices, and business intelligence data to improve efficiency.
Zebra’s manufacturing technology solutions enable manufacturers to become more agile, optimize plant floor performance and embrace market changes.
Zebra's market-leading solutions and products improve customer satisfaction with a lower cost per interaction by keeping service representatives connected with colleagues, customers, management and the tools they use to satisfy customers across the supply chain.
In today's world, the demands on transportation and logistics companies are higher than ever. Dedicated Warehouse, Fleet and Delivery, and Yard and Terminal solutions enable visibility to every aspect of your business and keep operations running flawlessly around the clock.
Zebra's hospitality technology solutions equip your hotel and restaurant staff to deliver superior customer and guest service through inventory tracking and more.
Empower your field workers with purpose-driven mobile technology solutions to help them capture and share critical data in any environment.
Learn how Zebra's public sector technology solutions empower state and local governments to improve efficiency with asset tracking and data capture devices.
Zebra's range of Banking technology solutions enables banks to minimize costs and to increase revenue throughout their branch network. Learn more.
Zebra's range of mobile computers equip your workforce with the devices they need from handhelds and tablets to wearables and vehicle-mounted computers.
Zebra's desktop, mobile, industrial, and portable printers for barcode labels, receipts, RFID tags and cards give you smarter ways to track and manage assets.
Zebra's 1D and 2D corded and cordless barcode scanners anticipate any scanning challenge in a variety of environments, whether retail, healthcare, T&L or manufacturing.
Zebra's extensive range of RAIN RFID readers, antennas, and printers give you consistent and accurate tracking.
Choose Zebra's reliable barcode, RFID and card supplies carefully selected to ensure high performance, print quality, durability and readability.
Zebra's location technologies provide real-time tracking for your organization to better manage and optimize your critical assets and create more efficient workflows.
Zebra's rugged tablets and 2-in-1 laptops are thin and lightweight, yet rugged to work wherever you do on familiar and easy-to-use Windows or Android OS.
With Zebra's family of fixed industrial scanners and machine vision technologies, you can tailor your solutions to your environment and applications.
Discover Zebra’s range of accessories from chargers, communication cables to cases to help you customize your mobile device for optimal efficiency.
Zebra's OEM scan engines, imagers, and private label OEM products offer flexible integration and help enhance product development with modern OEM technology.
Zebra's environmental sensors monitor temperature-sensitive products, offering data insights on environmental conditions across industry applications.
Keep labor costs low, your talent happy and your organization compliant. Create an agile operation that can navigate unexpected schedule changes and customer demand to drive sales, satisfy customers and improve your bottom line.
Empower the front line with prioritized task notification and enhanced communication capabilities for easier collaboration and more efficient task execution.
Get full visibility of your inventory and automatically pinpoint leaks across all channels.
Reduce uncertainty when you anticipate market volatility. Predict, plan and stay agile to align inventory with shifting demand.
Drive down costs while driving up employee, security, and network performance with software designed to enhance Zebra's wireless infrastructure and mobile solutions.
Explore Zebra’s printer software to integrate, manage and monitor printers easily, maximizing IT resources and minimizing down time.
Make the most of every stage of your scanning journey from deployment to optimization. Zebra's barcode scanner software lets you keep devices current and adapt them to your business needs for a stronger ROI across the full lifecycle.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
Zebra DNA is the industry’s broadest suite of enterprise software that delivers an ideal experience for all during the entire lifetime of every Zebra device.
Advance your digital transformation and execute your strategic plans with the help of the right location and tracking technology.
Boost warehouse and manufacturing operations with Symmetry, an AMR software for fleet management of Autonomous Mobile Robots and streamlined automation workflows.
The Zebra Aurora suite of industrial automation software enables users of all experience levels to solve their track-and-trace and vision inspection needs.
Zebra Aurora Focus brings a new level of simplicity to controlling enterprise-wide manufacturing and logistics automation solutions. With this powerful interface, it’s easy to set up, deploy and run Zebra’s Fixed Industrial Scanners and Machine Vision Smart Cameras, eliminating the need for different tools and reducing training and deployment time.
Aurora Imaging Library™, formerly Matrox Imaging Library, machine-vision software development kit (SDK) has a deep collection of tools for image capture, processing, analysis, annotation, display, and archiving. Code-level customization starts here.
Aurora Design Assistant™, formerly Matrox Design Assistant, integrated development environment (IDE) is a flowchart-based platform for building machine vision applications, with templates to speed up development and bring solutions online quicker.
Designed for experienced programmers proficient in vision applications, Aurora Vision Library provides the same sophisticated functionality as our Aurora Vision Studio software but presented in programming language.
Aimed at machine and computer vision engineers, Aurora Vision Studio software enables users to quickly create, integrate and monitor powerful machine vision applications without the need to write a single line of code.
Adding innovative tech is critical to your success, but it can be complex and disruptive. Professional Services help you accelerate adoption, and maximize productivity without affecting your workflows, business processes and finances.
Zebra's Managed Service delivers worry-free device management to ensure ultimate uptime for your Zebra Mobile Computers and Printers via dedicated experts.
Find ways you can contact Zebra Technologies’ Support, including Email and Chat, ask a technical question or initiate a Repair Request.
Zebra's Circular Economy Program helps you manage today’s challenges and plan for tomorrow with smart solutions that are good for your budget and the environment.
The Zebra Knowledge Center provides learning expertise that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your environment.
Zebra has a wide variety of courses to train you and your staff, ranging from scheduled sessions to remote offerings as well as custom tailored to your specific needs.
Build your reputation with Zebra's certification offerings. Zebra offers a variety of options that can help you progress your career path forward.
Build your reputation with Zebra's certification offerings. Zebra offers a variety of options that can help you progress your career path forward.
Most tasks today are a race against time, and nearly every organization is battling data accuracy issues – especially when it comes to inventory. That’s why radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions have become so popular amongst the largest and smallest businesses alike. More than 20 billion RFID tag integrated circuits (IC) were sold worldwide in 2020, with approximately 65% going to the retail sector.
It takes a long time to scan the barcode of every item in stock to find “the right one” or reconcile inventory management system data against shelf stock. And using pen and paper checklists to conduct quarterly or even yearly cycle counts takes hours, if not days. Considering that workers don’t even have minutes to spare in today’s on-demand world, the investment in RFID technology has been easy to justify – especially since the introduction of RFID sleds that can add RFID capability to mobile computers.
In 2016, when Zebra first launched the RFD8500 UHF RFID Sled, we wanted to help retail associates find and count inventory far faster than they had in the previous decades. Customer satisfaction levels and sales volumes depended on it. There was a tech revolution unfurling, disrupting the traditional retail model, and the on-demand economy was erupting in nearly every aspect of life. Those who couldn’t get customers what they wanted, when they wanted it, were at a competitive disadvantage. So, we had to make it easier for our customers to track, and therefore reorder, everything from sporting goods to sunglasses.
Then we noticed a pattern emerging across nearly every sector, including hospitality and healthcare – a need for greater inventory visibility and critical asset tracking outside traditional supply chain environments. Restaurants, hotels, and hospitals aren’t necessarily selling products off the shelf like traditional retailers, yet they do maintain quite an extensive shelf inventory of supplies. The same is true of public safety agencies. Without easy insight into availability or utilization, it can be hard to ensure the right items are always on hand to meet customer expectations, whether providing meals, a relaxing vacation experience, or medical treatment. It can also be challenging to improve operational readiness. (Just ask the Pasco County Fire Rescue team.)
So, we’ve worked diligently over the last five years to understand how we can make RFID accessible to all organizations that need insight into inventory lifecycles and their assets and help extend the lifespan of today’s RFID-related technology investments for years to come. And I’m excited to announce we’ve come up with a solution that provides universal accessibility to RFID, extreme flexibility in use, and impressive investment longevity!
Fixed RFID readers aren’t feasible in every facility or warranted in every situation. And not everyone wants to spend the money on standalone handheld RFID readers for workers who may not be conducting around-the-clock inventory counts or searches. Yet, the value proposition for RFID is growing in almost every sector, as is the availability of mobile computers that can easily be adapted for RFID applications. That’s what compelled us to design an RFID sled in the first place.
Most businesses are using mobile computers in some capacity within their four walls – or planning to do so in the very near future, and this snap-and-go accessory makes it easy to transform a handheld mobile computer into a handheld RFID reader in mere seconds. Store associates, restaurant staff, nurses, and even the hotel concierge – all of whom are constantly on the move – can attach the sled adaptor to their Android™ mobile computer when needed and remove it when the inventory count is done or they’ve found what they’re looking for. No tools or special training necessary.
However, legacy RFID sleds only offered a Bluetooth connection to mobile computers, which we ultimately learned wasn’t always desired. (Many customers want to avoid the Bluetooth pairing process and prefer a physical electronic connection to the mobile computer that is more secure and easier to use.) We also found out just how important it is to be able to charge the RFID sled, mobile computer or combination of both in the same cradle slot. (No one wants to have to manage, store and plug into multiple chargers if they can help it.) Plus, customers have made it clear just how much they would value a forward-compatible RFID sled that can work with future generations of Zebra mobile computers.
So, the RFD40 sled, which will support Zebra's current mobile computers as well as new mobile computers as they come out, has been engineered to deliver every single one of these recently realized requirements! You don’t have to send the sled back to IT for retrofitting, either. When you’re ready to upgrade your mobile computers, just swap out the sled adaptor and cup on each device and cradle. Again, no tools are needed, and no one will need to hassle with plugging or unplugging any wire harnesses.
Once the sled is attached, it will only take users a second or two to confirm what inventory and assets you have on hand. Literally. The new RFD40 can read up to 1300+ tags per second! That’s huge! In a minute, one person can accurately account for 78,000 different items! Even if you have 10 times that many items on hand, it will still only take a fraction of the time it does now to complete a full inventory count or locate critical items or assets. That’s incredible when you think about how long it would otherwise take someone to individually scan each barcoded box or piece of equipment.
RFID has opened our eyes to things we would otherwise miss – much like the barcode did when it was first invented. Businesses that aren’t yet looking at RFID for everyday inventory track and trace or the daily and weekly cycle counts that have become common are missing out on the opportunity to improve operational performance, supply chain resilience, and customer satisfaction. We’ve seen what happens when we lose sight of inventory throughput – and inventory that is still sitting on the shelf…somewhere. If you don’t think RFID is a tech tool within reach for your business, know things have changed tremendously in the last few years. (Really, the last few months.) If you use Zebra mobile computers in some way to conduct business, it is absolutely possible for you to fast-track RFID solution implementation without a heavy lift. Plus, with the improvements we made to the RFD40 UHF RFID Standard Sled, you can continuously modernize your mobility solution as needed in the coming years without disrupting any of the RFID-powered inventory management processes you stand up today. You can even use multiple mobile computers with the same sled if you maintain a mixed device fleet —and charge all mobile computers and RFID sleds using the same cradles. Just attach the appropriate cradle cup and you’ll be ready to plug in.
Did I mention the RFD40 also has a 7000mAh battery and quick release function that's accessible without removing the mobile computer? Or that its tri-function trigger allows users to quickly read RFID tags, scan barcodes, and collaborate with an associate via push to talk? It can even be dynamically programmed based on the specific task being worked on!
In other words, workers who may spend all day retrieving inventory from the warehouse for store shelf – or firetruck supply – replenishment will have no problem charging through tasks uninterrupted, even if they are switching between multiple types of tasks and device tools.
If you’ve yet to deploy an RFID solution and think the RFID sled might be just what you need to improve inventory visibility, or you’re just looking for a handheld solution that will be compatible with your current and future mobile computers, I encourage you to give us a call. You can also learn more about the RFD40’s design and capabilities on our website.
###
The Zebra RFD40 UHF RFID Standard Sled is currently compatible with all Zebra eConnex™-equipped (8-pin) mobile computers, including WWAN-enabled versions.
###
Eric Malmed is a member of the Zebra Technologies product management team with subject matter expertise in RFID technology. He's responsible for Zebra’s RFID fixed readers, sleds, integrated handhelds, and antennas, and has been instrumental to the successful development, launch, modernization, and growth of Zebra’s RFID data capture solutions portfolio.
Are you a Zebra Developer? Find more technical discussions on our Developer Portal blog.
Looking for more expert insights? Visit the Zebra Story Hub for more interviews, news, and industry trend analysis.
Use the below link to search all of our blog posts.
Legal Terms of Use Privacy Policy Supply Chain Transparency
ZEBRA and the stylized Zebra head are trademarks of Zebra Technologies Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2024 Zebra Technologies Corp. and/or its affiliates.