What if you didn’t have to rely on shipping carriers to scan your packages when they take possession of your shipments? eBay, Etsy, and Amazon require sellers to prove they ship their orders on time, so news that UPS has been installing sensor technology with no manual scanning required sounds like it could be a game-changer.
UPS has been transitioning to RFID shipping labels that are automatically tracked by sensors throughout their packages’ journey (RFID stands for radio frequency identification). On Tuesday, it announced: “RFID sensing technology is in all UPS package delivery vehicles in the U.S., in the company’s delivery facilities across the country and on every package shipped through over 5,500 The UPS Store(R) locations, including customer return shipments.”
UPS included the following information in Tuesday’s press release:
- RFID pickup sensing confirms packages have been picked up and are in UPS’s possession. No other carrier can offer this assurance across its U.S. network.
- Packages are automatically sensed as they move through the network and customers gain greater transparency into where their shipments are and how they are progressing.
- With more and better data, UPS responds faster when conditions change such as weather and other unexpected events.
One reader wondered how home-based sellers like himself could print RFID labels, as well as buyers who usually use regular printers when printing shipping labels for returns.
But larger business customers like Bill Ross of Ingram Micro see benefits. Ross told Supply Chain Dive that RFID offered information during a package’s journey that could enable shippers to work more proactively with the carrier on potential issues.
A purveyor of RFID solutions, RFIDLabel, posted the following video about UPS RFID technology on YouTube last year:
