Fabio Belloni is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Quuppa and a leading authority on advanced location technologies.
For years, the choice between radio frequency identification (RFID) and real-time location systems (RTLS) in asset tracking was framed as a trade-off between cost and visibility. While the fixed infrastructure costs are comparable, RFID’s low-cost tags made it an economical choice for tracking assets at key chokepoints, whereas RTLS provided continuous, real-time visibility across an entire area at a premium. In practice, this trade-off meant companies typically reserved real-time tracking for their most valuable assets rather than their entire inventory.
But that model is now breaking down. While RTLS tags move toward disposable, low-cost trackable devices and RFID systems become more data-rich and software-defined, the two technologies are no longer competing categories. They are converging into a layered tracking architecture: one where identity, location and motion data are no longer separate systems, but part of a single operational fabric.
As the CEO of a company operating in the RTLS sector, I have spent much of my career focused on RTLS rather than RFID. Yet as both markets evolve, the distinction between them is becoming less clear. Across logistics, manufacturing and supply chain operations, the conversation is shifting away from choosing one technology over another and toward learning how different visibility technologies can work together.
From Asset Tracking To Systems Intelligence
While both technologies have historically been used for tracking assets, they operate in fundamentally different ways. RFID relies on tags that are detected when they pass within range of a reader, creating visibility at specific chokepoints such as warehouse doors, loading bays or inventory stations. RTLS, by contrast, uses technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Ultra-Wideband (UWB), Wi-Fi or other positioning methods to continuously calculate an asset’s location within a defined area.
The business appeal of RFID has always been straightforward: Manage more assets, reduce operational costs and improve visibility at key points in the supply chain. Scans at receiving, dispatch and inventory control create a simple but effective model for tracking assets as they move through operations. The limitation, however, is equally clear: Everything between those checkpoints remains a blind spot.
RTLS historically filled that gap, but only for high-value assets where the ROI justified the price of the tag attached to each item itself. The result was a fragmented visibility stack: Pallets might be tracked in real time, boxes might be scanned intermittently and individual items were largely invisible, often because they were handled by tracking systems that were not exchanging data.
Among the available RTLS technologies, Bluetooth-based tags are approaching RFID-level price points thanks to advances in low-cost hardware. As a result, asset tracking is evolving into “flow intelligence.” Instead of simply asking where an asset is at a given moment, organizations can analyze how systems perform over time—where congestion develops, how long each stage of production actually takes and where process inefficiencies emerge. The result is continuous, real-time visibility into operational performance rather than periodic snapshots of asset locations.
The two technologies can be complementary, and in some cases competitive, enabling unprecedented levels of traceability across the supply chain.
Bringing Down Costs
Historically, RTLS adoption has been constrained by unit economics. Even when infrastructure costs were manageable, the per-tag cost created a ceiling on scalability. This meant ROI calculations had to be highly selective: Only certain assets (or staying below a volume of assets) justified real-time visibility.
But as Bluetooth RTLS tags are manufactured in far larger volumes, unit costs fall sharply from tens of dollars to a sweet spot of around $1 per tag. The more widely RTLS is adopted and the more the technology advances, the cheaper each additional tag becomes.
This matters because cost is no longer being set by niche, low-volume deployments, but by mass production for entire operational environments. Once tags are cheap enough to be used across thousands or even millions of items in an environmentally sustainable way, the reach of RTLS significantly widens.
Moreover, instead of calculating return per tagged item, organizations may begin calculating return per process improvement cycle: reduced dwell time across warehouse zones, lower safety stock requirements due to improved forecasting accuracy, faster throughput, and fewer lost or delayed shipments due to end-to-end traceability. Value is no longer solely tied to the asset being tracked, but to the overall process being optimized.
Breaking Down Data Silos
One of the less discussed benefits of RTLS–RFID convergence is its potential to eliminate the fragmented data environments that have long characterized industrial operations.
Traditionally, different teams have relied on different visibility systems. Warehouse managers use RFID-based inventory platforms, manufacturing teams monitor production assets through separate operational technologies, logistics departments track shipments through transportation systems, and safety teams often deploy their own location technologies. While each system generates valuable information, the data frequently remains isolated within departmental workflows.
As RTLS and RFID architectures converge, organizations can gain the opportunity to create a common operational data layer that spans the entire life cycle of an asset or product. A component can be identified when it enters a facility, tracked throughout production, monitored during storage and followed through distribution without requiring multiple disconnected tracking systems.
This is increasingly important as companies pursue end-to-end digital transformation initiatives. Many organizations have invested heavily in automation, analytics platforms and AI-driven decision-making tools, only to discover that fragmented data stored in various formats is a major obstacle to extracting value from those investments. Converged tracking systems can help address this challenge by providing a consistent source of information for asset identity, location and movement across departments.
Final Thoughts
As the boundaries between RFID and RTLS continue to blur, the focus naturally shifts from tracking individual assets to understanding how entire systems operate.
The question for many organizations now is how to build system architectures that combine identification, location and operational data. The organizations that I believe will succeed are those that view tracking not as a stand-alone capability, but as part of a broader digital infrastructure.
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