What is the cost benefit of EID? Decisions make money, not an EID tag. Other than an increase in labour efficiency for tasks already undertaken prior to implementing EID, there is little return that can be attributed directly to the investment in the tag or technology itself. It is the quality of decision making that has an enormous impact upon the value garnered from the use of EID. EID can trigger a change in decision making that can derive a direct cost benefit. The change may be delivered through accessibility to more accurate, consistent, and meaningful data, but there cannot be a direct benefit associated with EID in achieving this practice change. labour saving is easily calculated for efficiency gains in a given task, placing a value upon other gains is not as simple. Cost benefit: labour-saving If looking simply at the labour saving achieved for a single task, Table 1 illustrates the differences in labour cost associated with recording individual live weights using visual tags, as opposed to EID tags. Table Costs comparison of using visual and RFID (EID) tags for recording live weights of individual animals (Sheep CRC 2006) Operation 1 Operation 1 Operation 2 Operation 2 (collecting (collecting (collecting (collecting weights weights only) weights weights only) - - RFID and data and data visual tags cleaning) cleaning) – – visual tags RFID No. of sheep 700 700 600 600 No. of labour units 3 2 3 2 No. of man hours 11.67 4.67 13.5 3 Cost @ $40 per hour $466.80 $186.80 $540 $120 Cost per weight recorded $0.67 $0.27 $0.90 $0.20 Estimated error rate 5% 0.05% — — No. of correction needed 30 0.3 — — Time/error 0.1 0.1 — —
What is the cost benefit of EID? Decisions make money, not an EID tag. Other than an increase in labour efficiency for tasks already undertaken prior to implementing EID, there is little return that can be attributed directly to the investment in the tag or technology itself. It is the quality of decision making that has an enormous impact upon the value garnered from the use of EID. EID can trigger a change in decision making that can derive a direct cost benefit. The change may be delivered through accessibility to more accurate, consistent, and meaningful data, but there cannot be a direct benefit associated with EID in achieving this practice change. labour saving is easily calculated for efficiency gains in a given task, placing a value upon other gains is not as simple. Cost benefit: labour-saving If looking simply at the labour saving achieved for a single task, Table 1 illustrates the differences in labour cost associated with recording individual live weights using visual tags, as opposed to EID tags. Table Costs comparison of using visual and RFID (EID) tags for recording live weights of individual animals (Sheep CRC 2006) Operation 1 (collecting weights only) - visual tags Operation 1 (collecting weights only) - RFID Operation 2 (collecting weights and data cleaning) – visual tags Operation 2 (collecting weights and data cleaning) – RFID No. of sheep 700 700 600 600 No. of labour units 3 2 3 2 No. of man hours 11.67 4.67 13.5 3 Cost @ $40 per hour $466.80 $186.80 $540 $120 Cost per weight recorded $0.67 $0.27 $0.90 $0.20 Estimated error rate — — 5% 0.05% No. of correction needed — — 30 0.3 Time/error — — 0.1 0.1
Opportunities%20for%20management%20of%20sheep.docx