Implementing RFID to Shrink the Supply Chain

How can implementing RFID Shrink the Supply Chain and Free up capital?

Improve Warehouse and Distribution Productivity from 7% to 40%: Companies can replace the point-and-read, labor intensive process of tracking pallets, cases, cartons and individual products with an RFID process. Because the process is automated, labor costs can be reduced, improving productivity, and enabling the reallocation of resources for more strategic tasks and better scale operations.

Improve Retail and Point of Sale Productivity by up to 20%: The use of RFID at the product level can help retailers reduce the labor costs and service fees of regular stock management and store shelf inventory.

Reduce Out-Of-Stock by up to 50%: When an item is out-of-stock, 20% of the time the customer either does not buy or buys a competitive product. In grocery stores, as much as 8.3% percent of revenue is lost each year due to out-of stock conditions.

Improve Inventory Management: Inventory accuracy is important to help improve visibility and insight into what specific raw materials have arrived, helping to assure the right materials are available and to better manage just-in-time production models, track work in process, and speed finished goods through the supply chain. The use of RFID improves these processes, and helps minimize costly inventory errors, reducing production delays and lowering production reconfiguration costs that often result from material or demand planning issues.

Reduce Shrinkage (loss and theft) by 18% or more: Losses due to theft are estimated to cost retailers over $30B per year, and are estimated conservatively at 1.7% of overall sales13. With RFID, pallets, cartons and individual products can be tracked through the supply chain to pinpoint product location and eliminate inventory errors that can cause shipments to go missing. Better yet, it enables one to find where in the process the product was lost.

Reduce Supply Chain Errors: By replacing manual barcode scanning with automated RFID information capture, data entry errors can be eliminated, reducing not only inventory and tracking mistakes, but also the costly labor required to resolve such mistakes. Additionally, because RFID automates data entry, more collection and tracking can occur throughout the process, helping to more specifically pinpoint asset location and workflow. Supply chain errors are greatly reduced.

Improve Capital Asset Tracking and Management: In many businesses important assets such as shop equipment and containers are often difficult to track, maintain and secure. RFID can be used effectively to better locate movable assets, ease maintenance scheduling and assure maintenance performance, as well as help prevent loss.

Reduce or Eliminate Counterfeiting and Improve Security: In many industries, counterfeit or non-secure goods introduced into the supply chain cause large direct losses of revenue. RFID increases brand protection and helps mitigate safety, security, regulatory and liability risks.

Improve Accounts Receivable (AR): With more accurate and real-time tracking of what has shipped, the accounts receivable process can become much more efficient, with shorter billing and payment cycles. For example, RFID allows vendors to automatically produce customer invoices as soon as items are shipped and enables payment automation as well.

Meet Market Mandates and Protect Revenue Opportunities: Many industry leaders have set the stage by making RFID functionality and compliance a prerequisite for to participating in their ecosystem. RFID can help meet these mandatory requirements, or provide an advantage for those who proactively implement the technology over those that are struggling to meet these new market demands.

Improve Customer Experience: RFID can help to improve the overall customer experience. First, RFID enables better management of inventory, ensures proper deliveries and shipments, better forecasts demand, better manages promotions and new product introductions, and reduces out-of-stock conditions. Elimination of supply chain issues and product availability results in customers getting what they want, when they want it.