2025 Industrial Automation New Trend: How UHF RFID can Improve Supply Chain Efficiency?
Under the background of Industry 4.0 and the deep integration of globalized supply chain, UHF RFID technology has become the core driving force for supply chain efficiency leap in 2025 by virtue of its long range, bulk identification and anti-jamming capabilities.
First, the technical characteristics of UHF RFID and supply chain adaptability
UHF RFID working frequency of 860-960MHz, with the following advantages:
Long-range identification: fixed readers can cover a range of 15 meters, support forklifts, conveyor belts and other dynamic scenes;
Batch processing capacity: single read thousands of tags, adapt to the container, pallet level cargo management;
Environmental adaptability: metal-resistant tags are heat and water resistant to meet the needs of cross-border transportation and other complex scenarios.
According to GS1 statistics, in 2025, 72% of the world’s manufacturing enterprises will deploy UHF RFID in the supply chain, to promote inventory accuracy from 78% to 99.2%, shorten the delivery cycle by more than 30%.
Second, the efficiency reconstruction of the whole chain of supply chain
- Purchasing and warehousing: unmanned intelligent receiving and inspection
Technological breakthrough: UHF RFID is linked with automatic sorting system to realize “second-level” acceptance and warehousing.
Case Study: Unilever deployed UHF RFID channel door in Rotterdam warehouse, automatically comparing ASN (Advance Stock Notification) and real goods when container passes through, the error rate is reduced from 4% to 0.1%, and the labor cost is reduced by 60%.
- Warehouse Management: Dynamic Inventory and Space Optimization
Technological breakthrough: Intelligent shelves monitor inventory levels in real time, combined with AI to predict replenishment demand.
Practical case: Amazon adopts UHF RFID intelligent shelves, inventory turnover rate increased by 45%, and out-of-stock loss reduced by 32%.
- Logistics transportation: full visualization tracking
Technological breakthrough: UHF RFID is integrated with GPS, temperature and humidity sensors to build transportation digital twin.
Practical case: Maersk embedded UHF RFID in cold chain containers, real-time monitoring of vaccine transportation environment, delivery on-time rate increased from 83% to 98%.
- Point-of-sale: automatic replenishment and reverse traceability
Technological breakthrough: store shelf labels are linked with ERP to trigger automatic replenishment commands.
Practical case: ZARA realized the daily inventory of store stock through UHF RFID, and the out-of-stock SKU was reduced by 57%, and the slow-moving stock was reduced by 28%.
Third, technology integration driven innovation model
- UHF RFID × 5G: low-latency wide-area collaboration
5G network to support massive RFID devices connected concurrently to achieve real-time synchronization across regional warehouses.
Case: Huawei deployed 5G+UHF RFID in Dongguan logistics center, and the decision-making time for cross-province allocation was shortened from 2 hours to 5 minutes.
- UHF RFID × Blockchain: Trusted Data Sharing
RFID data hash values are written into the blockchain to ensure data consistency among supply chain parties.
Case: Walmart requires fresh food suppliers to use blockchain UHF RFID tags, and the response time for traceability is compressed from 7 days to 2 seconds.
- UHF RFID × Digital Twin: Simulation to Optimize Decision Making
Build supply chain digital twin models based on RFID data to simulate risk scenarios and optimize strategies.
Case: BMW used digital twins to predict the impact of chip shortages on production, and adjusted its procurement plan 3 months in advance to avoid a loss of $120 million.