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RFID and the Frictionless Retail Experience

RFID and the Frictionless Retail Experience

Friction, as we learned in elementary school science, slows things down. Friction in brick-and-mortar retail settings – making the in-store customer wait – is one of the biggest pain points in retail operations. Slow checkouts are a friction pain point that reduces sales, tarnishes brand image, and pushes customers toward online shopping.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is starting to move retail toward the goal of frictionless checkout. RFID is the undeniable champion of physical asset management – fast, accurate, reliable, cost-effective, and flexible. Warehousing and logistics have relied on RFID technology for decades. But applying it to the challenge of the “last mile” has proved to be elusive until recently.

The last mile – delivering products to the end user – is the most expensive and complex segment of the supply chain. Inventory re-supply, shelf re-stocking, and buyer check-out are labor-intensive. The first breakthrough in a fully automated last mile was Amazon’s 2018 trial launch of its Go checkout-free retail program. Go created a frictionless shopping experience, with shoppers choosing their merchandise and walking out of the store without any active interaction with payment technology or staff.

RFID is integral to the success of true frictionless checkout. Cameras identify objects as they are removed from shelves. RFID readers detect RFID-chip credit cards to ensure merchants are paid for whatever leaves the store. Working together, the cameras and RFID manage a store’s inventory with a real-time speed and efficiency that cannot be matched by less automated means. Amazon Go and similar frictionless checkout technologies are expected to expand from $218 million to $45 billion by 2023.

Access to real-time data is what makes RFID such a valuable asset to supply chain operations. Linked to ERP (enterprise resource planning), SCM (supply chain management), and just-walk-out software, RFID provides visibility throughout the manufacturing supply chain, from factory to warehouse to consumer.

RFID helps information and operations work together. The information collected from RFID sources along the chain improves the flexibility and responsiveness of the entire chain. Suppliers can respond to trends more easily, and identify potential supply-and-demand incongruities before they become a problem.

No matter where your business operates in the supply chain – manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, retail – RFID provides crucial end to end management information. Be agile, be proactive, and be confident that RFID-supplied data lets you make better informed decisions.

 

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RFID: Keep Your Reusable Containers Coming Back for More

RFID: Keep Your Reusable Containers Coming Back for More

Whether your enterprise uses bins, pallets, racks, crates, drums, or shipping containers, you know there are sound economic reasons for investing in reusable containers. Reusable containers are far more economical than disposable ones over their useful lifetime. They are tangible assets, just like manufacturing equipment or raw materials. Unfortunately, the reusable containers of many businesses go missing in the supply chain, at quite a cost.

By definition, tangible assets of all kinds are reusable, with a usable-life calculation that includes depreciation, future replacement cost, maintenance and safety costs, and salvage value. When an asset goes missing, you’re losing money beyond the initial cost. You’re also losing the value of the full depreciation as well as paying for the cost of replacement. Your finances may have been based on replacement costs over a number of months or years, and suddenly you’re paying out significant sums to replace assets prematurely.

Losing reusable containers before they have reached the end of their useful life has a direct negative impact on your business’s finances. The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG.org) estimated the cost of replacing missing reusable containers at $750 million annually, in U.S. auto manufacturing alone. Plastic pallet theft costs businesses approximately $500 million a year.

It pays to keep track of your reusable containers.

But manually tracking reusable containers can cost your operations even more money. Manual tracking – paper logs, checking out and checking back in, tracking missing items through all possible locations – is labor-intensive and error-prone.

RFID is the technology solution that more and more enterprises are using to manage their reusable containers. Once considered economically viable only for large operations, today’s RFID systems are cost-effective for the majority of small businesses. The cost of RFID tags has dropped, but additionally, researchers have found that inexpensive single-use tags can in fact be reused multiple times, just like the reusable containers they’re affixed to. A pilot study showed that RFID-tagged reusable agricultural containers could repeatedly travel from orchard to retailer and back again, over 1,000 miles, without tag or data loss.

Moreover, each tag’s unique identifier can be associated with information about the container’s contents. Beyond tracking the reusable container itself, the contents can be identified and tracked – beneficial data for quality assurance, compliance, and customer satisfaction, automatically delivered in the RFID system’s reports.

RFID will make sure your business doesn’t “pay the freight” for the cost of missing reusable containers. An RFID consultant can help you build a customized solution to keep track of these valuable business assets.

 

Photo © Svitlana / AdobeStock

If You’re Tired of Inflation, RFID Has a Solution

If You’re Tired of Inflation, RFID Has a Solution

Inflation is the hot topic these days. A perfect storm of bad weather, a pandemic, armed conflict, and supply chain breakdowns have put a price squeeze on consumers and businesses alike. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but finger-pointing isn’t a solution. Instead, smart business leaders are looking to their own operations for ways to mitigate inflationary pressures.

One of those solutions is technology, in the form of better information, increased efficiencies, less waste, and speedier actions. RFID technology in particular addresses these needs, and it’s a tech solution that already exists in many operations. From logistics and retail to healthcare, pharma, public safety, and education, RFID counts objects and tracks their movements with unmatched speed and accuracy.

Here’s how RFID combats inflation:

  • Accurate information – RFID’s inventory accuracy approaches 98%, far above any handcount. With accurate information, over-ordering is eliminated, saving time, storage space, and money at a time when conserving funds is exceptionally important. With RFID, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, for instance, doesn’t have to contract for extra warehouse space and over-order in case their inventory isn’t accurate.
  • Increased efficiencies – RFID tracks supplies from manufacturer to storage to user, creating an early-warning system for potential stock shortages. Managers can adjust their order timing to account for uncertain supply chains, keeping adequate supplies on hand for operations at all times. Hospitals, for example, can keep a steady supply of medications flowing from their in-house pharmacies into the hands of patients.
  • Less waste – RFID provides aging information as well as quantity and location. Whether a business is working with perishables like foods or drugs, or longer-lived items like durable equipment, using operational inventory in a timely manner prevents waste. Return on inventory investment stays high, and inventory losses (and costs) stay low.
  • Fast actions – RFID is constantly monitoring an inventory’s quantity, location, and age and delivering actionable data. Managers can react quickly to any opportunity, whether it’s incoming supplies or outgoing products.

Inflation is, in part, a consequence of actions out of our control. RFID puts you back in charge of the things you can control. Use its data to manage better, and stand up to inflation.

 

Photo by ajr_images ©  / AdobeStock

Paperwork Isn’t in Order? Document Digitization Can Fix That.

Paperwork Isn’t in Order? Document Digitization Can Fix That.

If you work in logistics, you know all about the piles of paperwork that accumulate with any shipment. And with all that paper come the inevitable slowdowns when a document is missing or damaged, and has to be re-created. Supply chain slowdowns are a hot topic, and paperwork is part of the problem.

According to an analysis by IBM and shipping giant Maersk, nearly 200 documents were generated for a single shipment of flowers from Kenya to the Netherlands. Each document – bills of lading, Statements of Fact, and an array of certificates – represents a potential bottleneck in the smooth flow of shipments. In an industry where timeliness matters (and really, are there any industries in which time isn’t of the essence?), paper documents are a threat to business.

Digitized documents are now beginning to reduce the mountain of paper that accompanies shipments. One test of logistics digitalization, including digitized documents, reduced the usual 2-week border clearance to one day – an extraordinary improvement.

The logistics sector isn’t the only one seizing the opportunity for more efficient paper management. Government agencies, healthcare, public safety, and the legal system are all benefiting from document digitization, or digitization – converting paper documents to digital ones. Digitization creates “smart documents:” a database of secure, searchable digital documents accessible from anywhere.

Digitization speeds up operations in two ways:

  • The correct digital version of any paperwork can be located and retrieved with electronic speed. No more long delays spent digging through files or archives.
  • A document’s digital version is securely stored. It doesn’t disappear under a desk, or get damaged by insects, or become illegible due to a spilled cup of coffee.

Digitization has other benefits besides operational speed and efficiency. It reduces the need for storage space, as it eliminates the needs for numerous filing cabinets. It is accessible from anywhere, whether an employee is on another floor in a building, or working from home. It cuts down on physical paper usage and the associated business and environmental costs.

But if time is critical to your business, document digitization is guaranteed to save time in retrieving documents, and in preserving documents safely for future use. With digitization, your ship will certainly come in.

 

Photo © Idanupong / AdobeStock

Authenticity Matters. RFID Ensures Your Customers’ Trust.

Authenticity Matters. RFID Ensures Your Customers’ Trust.

Authenticity. Whether we’re buying for our businesses or ourselves, we trust that what we’re receiving is the genuine article, the real deal. And if we discover that the purchased item isn’t authentic, we will never trust that brand again.

And trust can make or break a business. A recent Harris Poll found that if Americans learned that they had purchased a fake product, 73% would stop buying from the company that sold it.

Often the brands themselves are unknowingly caught in the same web of fakery. It’s challenging for them to protect themselves from bad actors. Labels and packaging can be fraudulently duplicated, genuine raw materials can be hard to distinguish from fake ones, artworks can be cleverly copied to look just like the original.

But there’s hope. RFID is playing an ever-larger role in the area of authenticity guarantees. Provenance, a word originally associated with fine art, has come to mean the origin of any item with an unbroken chain of custody through its journey from manufacturing to consumption. The unique identity information contained in RFID tags ensures the provenance of an item.

Recent counterfeit-fighting applications include:

  • Legal documents with RFID embedded in the paper. These prevent the presentation of fake property transfers, licenses, and permits.
  • Live fish with tiny internal RFID tags. The tags ensure that inferior fish are not mislabeled as high-value ones.
  • Wine corks with embedded RFID tags. These provide a “digital birth certificate” proving that label on the bottle matches the wine inside it.
  • High value wood and wood products with embedded RFID tags. These prevent $400,000 guitar bodies and $500,000 violin bodies from being made with cheaper wood.

RFID has revolutionized retail and supply chain management, business to business commerce, and manufacturing and logistics. Now it’s supporting brand trust by guaranteeing authenticity. If you’re in the business of manufacturing and selling indisputably genuine products, add RFID to your process and be confident that counterfeits will be exposed.

Photo © ysbrandcosijn / AdobeStock