RFID in the Warehouse: Focus on Business Outcomes

I still remember our VP of Supply Chain saying, “We will never use RFID.” At the time, he was probably right. That’s no longer the case. Today, RFID hardware works. Read accuracy is reliable. Costs have come down. Source tagging is becoming common. By every technical measure, the technology has matured. And yet, many warehouse leaders still hesitate to move beyond pilots. That hesitation isn’t about technology anymore. It’s about trust.

Warehouses today are under pressure from every direction. Labor is harder to find and more expensive to retain. Order volumes fluctuate wildly. Customer tolerance for mistakes has dropped to near zero. 

In this article, we’ll look at why RFID matters now, how to know when it’s time, how to start without overreaching, which KPIs actually move, and how platforms like Sonaria are making RFID foundational for both AI and the operator experience on the floor.

Why RFID Finally Makes Sense for Warehouses

Anyone who has spent time in warehouse operations understands the fragile truth about inventory. Kevin Lawton, host of The New Warehouse Podcast, describes it plainly: “It takes a couple of seconds to misplace an item, but it could take you days or weeks to find that item again.” That gap between losing something and finding it again is where costs quietly pile up. Labor hours get burned. Orders get delayed. Teams chase symptoms instead of fixing root causes. 

John Wirthlin, Senior Product and Marketing Manager at Sonaria, has seen why past RFID efforts struggled to close that gap. “RFID used to fail because it was this cool tech instead of a measurable business outcome,” he explains. The technology wasn’t the problem. The lack of execution focus was.

What’s changed is not just affordability or accuracy, but the shift toward aligning RFID with real operational workflows. RFID in the warehouse is no longer experimental. As Wirthlin puts it simply, “The technology is mature.” The question now is whether operations are ready to use it intentionally.

Is It Time for RFID in Your Warehouse Operations?

When manual processes become bottlenecks instead of safeguards, RFID technology starts to make sense. That moment usually arrives quietly, long before leadership explicitly calls it out. Typically, warehouse operations feel pressure in the same places:

• High labor costs tied to manual checks and rework
• Persistent inventory accuracy issues that never fully resolve
• Missed or incorrect shipments discovered too late
• Shrink that’s explained away but never eliminated
• Misplaced assets that waste time and create downstream delays

The strongest candidates tend to be high-volume, higher-value environments where errors scale fast. As Wirthlin notes, “If one manual process becomes the bottleneck, where errors are happening or where time is lost, that’s where RFID flips from a nice-to-have to a business necessity.” It’s less about tagging everything and more about relieving pressure where it hurts most.

Leaders worry about the integration effort and clarity around ROI, and for good reason. “The real barrier is integration complexity and unclear ROI,” Wirthlin explains. The difference today is that RFID platforms are being designed to eliminate those friction points rather than amplify them.

How Do You Start with RFID in the Warehouse?

The most common mistake companies make when considering RFID in the warehouse is starting with hardware instead of business outcomes. Successful deployments reverse that order.

Wirthlin is direct on this point: “Start with business outcomes, not the hardware.” The first step is identifying one painful, measurable problem. What does a shipment error cost? What happens when receiving slows down, and dock doors become bottlenecks? What’s the impact of not being able to find assets when you need them? Don’t try to boil the ocean. Find something easy to test that will give you direct benefits right away. 

From there, the advice is to start small. One dock door. One workflow. One use case. “Pilot one use case. Make it simple. One door, not the entire warehouse,” Wirthlin says. That focus keeps risk low and learning high. When clients see the results, they start to identify where else they can apply the technology. 

Wirthlin encourages teams not to chase everything at once. “It’s very low risk from a technology and integration standpoint. Pilot one use case. Make it simple, and just get comfortable with the initial integration, then expand from there,” he says. Dock-door validation is often that entry point.

From there, results tend to stack:

• Dock-to-stock times improve by 70–80%
• Inventory accuracy reaches 99% or higher
• Cycle counting effort drops 60–70%
• Shipping errors get prevented before trucks leave
• Asset search time is reduced by up to 90%

Those outcomes change how operations behave. Teams move from reactive cleanup to proactive control. RFID stops being something you “check” and starts becoming something you trust.

As Wirthlin puts it, “Good RFID, when done right and done efficiently, it removes steps.” And when steps disappear, adoption follows.

RFID, AI, and the Operator Experience

AI in warehousing is everywhere right now. From forecasting and robotics to orchestration and optimization, the conversation keeps accelerating. But everything depends on one thing: reliable, real-time operational data.

That’s where RFID quietly becomes foundational for warehouses. As John Wirthlin explains, “Without RFID, AI guesses. With RFID, AI decides.” When systems can trust what’s actually happening on the floor, automation shifts from assumption to action.

At the same time, expectations around user experience are changing. Kevin Lawton points out that newer generations entering the workforce have grown up with intuitive, consumer-grade interfaces. “When you look at the user interaction piece, especially with younger generations coming into the workforce, they’re used to really good user experiences. They’ve grown up with smartphones and tablets, so the question becomes how you take a technology like RFID and make it easy to interact with and digestible for everyone.” That shift matters because adoption depends as much on usability as accuracy.

Instead of demanding constant scans, confirmations, and workarounds, RFID verifies work invisibly in the background. As Wirthlin puts it, “What we’re doing is replacing the beep.” Operators spend less time feeding the system and more time doing the work that matters.

And when Walmart is tagging packages of underwear, it’s a strong signal that RFID has crossed from novelty into necessity.

Sonaria Proves the Business Case for RFID in Warehousing

RFID success in the warehouse isn’t about more data or more sensors. It’s about aligning technology to real workflows, preventing mistakes before they happen, and restoring trust between systems and the people who rely on them.

When hardware, software, and execution come together, RFID stops being a pilot and becomes operational infrastructure. That’s when it earns its place on the warehouse floor and finally delivers on its promise. Be sure to check out the full episode from Sonaria on The New Warehouse Podcast and Contact Sonaria to learn more about bringing RFID into your operations.