What does RFID cost? That depends on five things.
There is no price per company and there is no price per employee. RFID costs whatever the five items below add up to, and which of them is largest differs per process. This page carries no amounts: we give those once the scope is known, because a price without a scope is a guess you get held to later.
The build-up
Five cost items, and what pushes them up or down
In this order, because this is how the weight shifts too. At one company the cost sits in the labels, at another in putting them on.
- Labels
- Per unit. Cardboard is cheapest, metal and washable a multiple of that
- Applying
- Sticking a label takes seconds, fitting a hard tag is work. Over thousands it adds up
- Reading
- A handheld per user, or a fixed reading point per doorway or workstation
- Connecting
- One-off, and usually smaller than asked: often only movements and deviations
- Upkeep
- Per year: reordering labels, maintaining equipment, people who change
What is not on the list: a licence per user or a percentage of your stock value. Those are models other parties use, and they make the bill unpredictable.
What really moves the price
Wel
- The material of your objects: metal and liquid call for a more expensive label
- How often an object passes a reading point: that sets how many points you need
- Whether you print labels yourself or buy them pre-encoded
- How many objects there are, because applying is one-off but it is still work
Niet
- The number of employees who use the system
- The value of your stock
- How many modules or features you switch on
- Whether you are a large or a small company
The costs follow the physical reality and not the size of your organization. That is why a small company with thousands of metal parts pays more than a large company with a hundred cardboard boxes.
The biggest item is usually invisible
Applying costs the most more often than the label does
With a label of a few cents the choice of label looks like a detail. Do the multiplication: labelling ten thousand objects is ten thousand actions, and that action differs per label type. Sticking a label on a flat box is a second, fitting a hard tag onto a metal cart is a minute. Screwing takes time, and gluing needs a clean surface and a cure. That difference is rarely the subject of the first conversation, and almost always the biggest item in the budget.
What it returns
A cost question without the other side is half the conversation
The question is not what RFID costs but whether it costs less than what you spend today on searching, counting and correcting. That can be worked out with your own numbers: how many people, how often, how long. The outcome is not a promise but an estimate based on your input, and that estimate is exactly what a Proof of Value then replaces with a measurement.
From an estimate to a price
You get a price once the scope is fixed, and the scope is fixed after one measured process. That way no quote rests on assumptions.
Scope
- One process, one site, temporary labels
- A baseline measurement of what it costs today
- A fixed price for that measurement, known up front
Go or no-go
After the measurement there is an outcome, a scope and a price for the next step. If it turns out not to pay off, it stops there.