Tobias Abendroth: Hello Chris, great that you found the time for this conversation. Over the past few years, TSC has expanded its RFID offering into a »complete RFID portfolio«. What advantages does this provide to resellers when they can source all RFID components from a single supplier?

Chris Brown: Hello Tobias. Our »complete RFID portfolio« approach to market brings a number of advantages and benefits to resellers. Firstly, it gives resellers a single point of contact for support and commercial questions. This greatly facilitates a reseller’s daily business operations. The fewer points of contact a reseller has to manage when selecting and implementing best-of-breed products for a project, the better for the reseller. Incidentally, this concept is also one of the reasons why AIDC distributors like Jarltech make so much sense in our industry: resellers need to simplify their support and sourcing channels.

Secondly, offering a complete portfolio forces the supplier, TSC in this case, to address many previously unconsidered technical issues with our products. For example, we have long been experts in the »tag encoding« side of the equation, but we did not have expertise in the »tag data interpretation« side. Our printer encoding expertise forced our reader engineers to learn about and develop support for proper tag reading, reporting and tag data interpretation.

Finally, our complete portfolio approach to market means that we are involved in the RFID ecosystem down to every nook and cranny. Although we tout a »complete portfolio«, there will always be components that we cannot offer. For example, a reseller might need a solution involving temperature sensor tags. We do not offer these – but we know who does, we have the contacts at these companies, and we have made sure our products work with these tags. In short, we now cover every aspect of RFID, either directly or indirectly.

Tobias Abendroth: That sounds great. Your approach really offers many advantages to our resellers. In your opinion, which industries currently offer the greatest potential for RFID solutions from the TSC portfolio?

Chris Brown: Retail has been and remains the greatest opportunity for our RFID portfolio. People are tiring of hearing »RFID for retail«, but that does not change the fact that it is still the greatest driver by far. And with DPP (Digital Product Passport) bearing down on everyone, RFID for retail will take yet another major step forward in demand and implementations.

Given all the success of RFID in retail, there is now considerable interest in other industries and applications. In the short term, a big driver of RFID will be asset tracking solutions. These are generally easy, fast and low-cost implementations that deliver great ROI. Retail has proven that RFID works; now simple applications, like asset tracking, have now become virtually standard solutions.

Transportation & logistics, T&L, should also see a boon in RFID adoption in the next few years. UPS has laid the groundwork. They did a lot of the dirty work. Now, other T&L players can leverage that work and implement solutions relatively easily.

Finally, I should mention all applications involving »item-level traceability«. I already mentioned DPP, but there are many other nascent regulations and guidelines covering things like food service, pharma, medical device and even cosmetics. We use the term item-level traceability as a catch-all for industries that require visibility into an item’s origins, production conditions, environmental footprint, recycling, sold-to, etc. RFID is an excellent AIDC technology to support item-level traceability requirements.

Tobias Abendroth: What role do topics such as end-to-end solutions and system integration play in your RFID strategy?

Chris Brown: We should be clear that TSC is not a »solution provider« or »systems integrator« in the traditional AIDC industry sense. That is the domain of Jarltech’s customer base. TSC is channel centric, and we rely on the reseller base to implement end-to-end solutions. Our strategy is to enable the reseller channel with industry-leading hardware, software, supplies, support – and even technical expertise – so that resellers can successfully focus on implementing quality solutions for end-users. We succeed when the channel succeeds. 

TSC’s complete portfolio approach has broadened and deepened our expertise and RFID ecosystem connections. We can confidently support resellers at every step of implementation.

Tobias Abendroth: Thank you. Let’s move on to the products: What are the key features of the new S10 RFID, and which use cases is it particularly suited for?

Chris Brown: The S10 RFID is an all-in-one reader and mobile computer. The reader and mobile computer are physically connected. Whether a customer is looking for an all-in-one reader or separate reader sled + mobile computer is a classic pros and cons situation, and a vendor needs to offer both. The all-in-one concept delivers the following advantages:

• Pairing a reader sled and mobile computer, particularly via Bluetooth, can be unintuitive and sometimes even unreliable. With an all-in-one, the extra step of pairing is eliminated.

• Mobile computers have a nasty habit of »walking off«. In other words, they go missing. It is a lot harder for an all-in-one to disappear.

  Single port charging! Just plug the one device in, and all components will charge.

• The S10 RFID is simpler to purchase and more economical than purchasing separate reader sleds and mobile computers. Customers do not need to worry about nearly as many part numbers, cradles, charging stations, cables, etc.

Tobias Abendroth: With the FR901, TSC offers a powerful RFID reader – what are the key advantages for your customers?

Chris Brown: The FR901 combines a powerful Qualcomm 6490-series processor with the Impinj E910 chipset to deliver strong RFID performance and fast processing at the edge. With a monostatic receive sensitivity of -103 dBm, it can detect very weak tag signals, helping customers achieve more reliable and consistent reads in demanding environments. In simple terms, receive sensitivity is the minimum signal strength the reader can still detect and decode, and the lower the number, the better. For example, -85 dBm is better than -80 dBm because that 5 dB difference means the reader can detect a signal that is roughly 3.16 times weaker. 

The FR901 supports Linux today, and the underlying platform also gives us the technical capability for optional Android support in the future, giving solution providers added flexibility as their system requirements evolve. Last but not least, a powerful fixed reader is only one part of a successful RFID solution. Real performance in the field depends on expertise in site survey, RF calibration, material testing, integration, and overall deployment design. That is why TSC’s dedicated RAIN RFID team is such an important advantage — we help customers and partners not only choose the right hardware but also apply it correctly to achieve the best possible results.