Company Client:
Italian underwear fashion manufacturer.
Scope of the solution:
RFID garment tagging for an enhanced efficiency of the activity in the points of sale.
The challenge
Inefficiencies in the points of sale
The customer, with a strong global sales network, went to KFI to streamline and modernize the activities in the stores. In particular, the intimate fashion company aimed to optimize activities such as:
- the inventory
- the rapid cashier service
- anti-shoplifting management
The solution
RFID parades the catwalk into production
To obtain these results, it was decided to shift the focus upstream of the distribution process and to act directly in the production plants, exploiting the historical know-how of KFI in the logistics and manufacturing sector. The Consulting & Solution team, in order to propose a simple solution capable of satisfying all requirements simultaneously, has decided to introduce the RFID Ultra wide Band technology in the labelling of garments made in three different European factories.
KFI intervened in the final phases of production, just after the phase in which a machine applies to the garments a cardboard bearing the product barcode, the relative commercial information and a blank RFID tag. At this point the garment passes through the RFID station of KFI. Here there is a Kathrein controller which queries a database, obtaining information on the item currently in production. Thanks to this data, the software checks if the labeller has applied the correct code and if the print is legible. If the check of the barcode gives a positive result, the tag encoding starts thanks to a conversion algorithm.
In this process, the controller stores in the support the references of the production plant and the EAN code of the article according to GS1 standards. Everything encrypted and password protected, to avoid unwanted overwriting.
An ad hoc application was developed to oversee the labelling and coding processes. This tool, thanks to a series of graphical interfaces, allows users to monitor the status of the controllers and lines involved. From its dashboard it is possible to trace the RFID writing operations, obtaining reports on the errors found.
The results
A more attractive shopping experience, a happy customer
The wide flexibility of the software implemented by KFI allows adding new RFID controllers in a few steps and quickly prepare additional stations for coding. This makes the solution easily scalable, so much so that it has been extended to several new production lines in the plants involved.
KFI has therefore achieved all initial objectives. With a single solution implemented in the production plants it was possible to streamline the activities in the group’s stores, simplifying the shop assistants’ activities and laying the foundations for a better brand experience.