Rica Lewis, a European provider of Jeans, has implemented item-level tracking RFID tracking to improve inventory management and merchandising. Our basic analysis suggests a compelling revenue enhancement benefit that well exceeds the incremental costs of deployment once fully implemented. The company sells roughly 5M pair of Jeans to retailers such as Carrefour, Auchan, Kiabi and [...]
American Apparel Update – American Apparel has added two additional stores and has provided some additional statistics. Recall our June 2009 case study focused on eight pilot stores and suggested a payback of just under five months. American Apparel has confirmed inventory accuracy of 95%, up from 65%-75% and a 50%-75% decrease of out-of-stocks as [...]
European apparel retailer Gerry Webber, which has 338 stand-alone stores and offers product in an additional 1,400 locations, announced its intent to begin a rollout of RFID to improve inventory visibility. Gerry Webber produces 25M garments each year and will embed RFID chips during the manufacturing process in each woven care label slated for an [...]
The Blood Center of Wisconsin, in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin and SysLogic Corporation, have received a $1.4M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the Phase II Prototype for using RFID in the blood supply chain. Phase I was funded with a $100,000 grant from NIH that evaluated the technical [...]
According to several widespread reports, Apple is considering equipping its next iPhone with NFC capability. According to these reports, the primary application is to enable devices to identify one another and establish a basis for device-to-device communication. In the September edition of RFID Monthly, we highlighted the ability to use NFC for multiple embedded applications [...]
Carnaval de Mexico, which produces children’s apparel in Mexico on a private label and branded basis, announced it is using Gen 2-based RFID to improve distribution center visibility. The company is currently tagging about one million items annually after the manufacturing process. Items are grouped and read, which builds up an association with a single [...]
VingCard announced a deployment of Signature RFID, a system of contactless electronic door locks, at the 325 room Grand Millennium Sukhumvit in Bangkok, Thailand. The locks are compatible with ISO 14443A/MiFare, ISO 14443B and ISO 15693 standards and can be used with cell phones. The system is designed to enable guests with expedited check-in and [...]
RFID Enables More Productive Farming
d’Vineripe, an Australian Tomato grower, is leveraging RFID to analyze workflow and worker productivity. The company produces about 4,600 tons of tomatoes each year, and at any one time has 260,000 plants growing in its 8 hectare green house. Each day, about 150 workers perform eight different tasks, such as pruning, [...]
The Jackson Health System, located in Miami, announced the expansion of its ZigBee based real-time locating system beyond Jackson Memorial Hospital to Jackson North Medical Center and (382 bed acute care) Jackson South Community Hospital (199 bed acute care) and provided some insight on benefits received to date. The system has been live at Jackson [...]
The Universal Postal Union (UPU) announced that 21 member country posts began using a Gen 2-based system to enable performance measurement as part of the UPU’s Global Monitoring System (GMS). Phase I includes 24,000 RFID enabled test letters that will be sent by 530 independent “panelists” that originate in 38 countries. The test letters will [...]