Will using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology soon change the way jewelers conduct business in Singapore? According to a recent piece in Art of Jewellery, about 15 local jewelers are using RFID in their shops, which makes them “more productive and reduces the high stress levels caused by the long time it used to take to locate missing high-value items”.
How Does RIFD Work?
The RFID tech works as follows: it “uses tags with embedded chips which can be detected by a scanner. It comes with a software program that accounts for the jewellery by checking the items against the total number stocked by the shop”. In this way, ‘it takes only one person to perform stock-taking, a job that used to take two employees to do so by hand”.
So, in essence, the RFID tech reduces the time it takes for employees to do stock-taking, as well as the time taken to track and account for missing or stolen articles.
Ngee Soon Jewellery is one of the earliest adopters of the technology, along with local retailer Poh Heng Jewellery and global chains such as Chow Tai Fook.
Jan Ho, executive director of the company, told the website: : “Today, it takes less than an hour to locate lost items, compared with a full day before the RFID system was implemented. Staff is also less worried about locating missing jewellery items, which used to cause high stress. This frees up more time for customer engagement and the selling of products”.
Now, the Singapore Jewellers Association (SJA), which has close to 300 members, is trying to get more jewelers to adopt the technology.
The tech isn’t cheap, although it has become more affordable in recent years. The price of a system, according to the piece, has dropped by more than 80% – from the more than $100,000 when it was first launched in 2004.
