The unprecedented disruptions brought by COVID 19 pandemic has greatly impacted the global supply chain, mankind industrial activities brought to a halt due to shortages of materials, lack of healthy labor force and strict SOP compliance. In the context of Malaysia, one of the greatest impacts is the acute labor shortage whereby the usual pre-pandemic era foreign labor supplies has disappeared due to the border locked down. This forces the manufacturers and traders to resort to other means and this has led to the soaring demand for automation. While large able manufacturer whom has well planned processes and financial means can be readily convert to automation, most SME lingers on with less or no option available.

For these SMEs, one of the way to reduce the dependencies of man-power would be to relook at the warehouse operations which can be easily convert to a system driven process. One such approach is to introduce the proper warehouse management to allow for stock location management, optimization, FIFO to reduce wastages and allows greater visibilities. For SMEs whom has already adopted Auto-ID technologies such as barcode system can enjoy greater efficiencies by adopting RFID technologies. RFID allows auto detection and counting of items, increase accuracies of inventory management by automating stock in and out location by using RFID enabled forklift. Pallets with RFID can be tracked and location can be determined from system.

RFID or Radio Frequencies Identification is a technologies where a electronics chip with Electronics Product Code ( EPC ) can be read by a scanner that is located 3-5 meter away. The technologies allows mass scanning of items on the pallet in on go as compare to barcode. Table below shows the difference between RFID and Barcode.