Service Bureaus Use Our Printers to Expedite RFID Tag “Personalization” for End Users

Service Bureas, sometimes called Bureau Services in other regions, can offer their customers properly printed and encoded RFID tags so end users can focus on their core business, instead of on RFID. With a typical Service Bureau job encompassing anywhere from 20-50,000 labels per run, quickly generating properly formatted RFID tags expedites the labeling of goods and business processes for the end user. Faster labeling and improved processes mean a boost to efficiency, lower costs and less time fixing errors.

Printronix Auto ID RFID printers support Service Bureas with multiple features for high performance printing and the flexibility needed for various encodings and tag types. Service Bureaus that can offer valid, correctly encoded RFID tags, have a rich offering to provide customers with little to no knowledge of RFID.

Benefits of RFID: Better Asset Tracking

Service Bureau jobs encompass a spectrum of end user applications. A typical RFID application that Service Bureaus support is asset tracking, because RFID has proven so effective for this application. Tracking and tracing assets with conventional barcodes is restrictive. Tracking assets that are tagged with barcodes becomes difficult unless you know exactly where the asset is (a Catch-22). It’s labor-intensive for organizations to take an inventory of assets, and a missing item could halt production, result in chargebacks, or take up a large amount of time searching for it.

RFID tagging makes asset tracking and tracing much easier. By tagging these assets with RFID tags, users can quickly locate and track assets with a significantly higher degree of accuracy than the process of manually scanning barcodes. It also eliminates extra time and labor costs spent tracking down an item in a facility.

High Performance and Accurate RFID Tag Production

Our printers offer a number of features that make it simple to produce runs of RFID labels with precise accuracy.

For example, Printronix Auto ID printers provide an agnostic approach to inlay placement (where the inlay is located in the label construction) that delivers three key benefits to help customers save time and money.

1. It makes your printer run faster. For OTS and specialty tags with fixed inlay placement from the manufacturer, using them will not affect speeds when using our printers.
2. It makes your label sourcing easier. If the labels you’ve been working with are not available, go ahead and get a different inlay placement or label—load them, calibrate them, and instantly you can work with them using our printers.
3. It saves you money on labels. If you go to an RFID label supplier website, you’ll often find the same 4x6 label—same materials and inlay—but with different inlay placement and they have totally different prices. With our printers, you can simply select the least expensive label.

Once you’ve calibrated that inlay placement for the labels you’re going to use, our printers will print and encode at full speed.

The Printronix Auto ID T6000e RFID enterprise printer and the T4000 RFID printer are used widely by Service Bureaus for asset tracking. These printers are affordable, easy to setup and simple to use. Service bureaus can pre-print and pre-encode the tags in large volumes, ship the tags to the user, and then onsite the end user can associate the tags with the assets.

Assets can vary in terms of size, construction, and physical form, so different tag types are often needed for different asset classes. Both the T6000e and T4000 RFID printers allow users to work with a wide range of tags such as classic smart labels, on-metal tags, very small tags, and plasticized Returnable Transport Item (RTI) tags.

Service Bureas can also set up an ordering system or portal so that manufacturers can enter basic data and place RFID tag orders via this portal. The closest Service Bureau location then does a quick, overnight job, throws the labels/tags into a van, and then delivers the labels/tags to the manufacturer’s site early the next day.

A Single Printer, Multiple Functions

The T6000e and T4000 printers are capable of handling on-metal tags and are not limited by inlay placement, making them effective and affordable for Service Bureaus needing to cover a wide range of tag types.

If you’re seeking a supplier for RFID labels, you can contact our Genuine Supplies team to walk you through the label selection process.

Our printers are available with our risk-free “Try Before You Buy” program. Email us at RFID@printronixautoid.com to learn how to leverage this smart trial program or contact your local TSC Printronix Auto ID sales representative.