Manor's RFID Deployment Expected to Yield Quick ROI

After the system reads the tags, workers move the mixed pallets and dollies by hand or forklift to a warehouse for short-term storage or directly toward the dock door bays. As the goods are moved to short-term storage or to the loading area, they pass through RFID readers at the doorways of storage areas, between buildings and at key thoroughfares in the DC. In that way, the system is updated regarding the goods' location. The DC in Hochdorf has about 40 readers that track the location of the pallets inside the DC's three buildings. This includes some 20 readers at dock doors. The DC at Möhlin has about 30 readers. Since the RFID tags are identified at various locations inside the DCs, Manor's computer system is always updated on the DC's "ready to ship" and "shipped" status, says Rene Wyss, the project manager for Rodata who helped design the system.

Because of the large numbers of tags moving around at the dock doors and through thoroughfares, Rodata designed a so-called transition portal using readers from Sirit, an RFID technology provider, and the Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) from Reva Systems, an RFID network infrastructure provider. The transition portals are able to calculate the direction of a pallet's movement and filter out unwanted tag reads, says Rosenberger. The data collected is interpreted with Reva's Location Virtualisation Tool, which filters out the extraneous reads and calculates the direction of movement based on the exact location of the EPC tags.

To track the movements of pallets and dollies at its facilities, Manor uses transition portals.

After the tags' final reading at the dock doors of the DCs, pallets and dollies are shipped to stores. Five stores are currently outfitted with RFID readers. Each of the five stores has one reader at each dock door, and two of those five stores have RFID readers at the entrance to separate storage areas. At these points, the tags on the pallets and dollies are read again, and the system compares goods ordered with actual goods received. If a box or crate is missing, the system alerts store managers.

During the initial stages of the rollout, Manor faced RF interference in its warehouse and difficulty positioning tags on mixed pallets. Rodata says it solved the problem with the help of Reva's TAP, which controls the UHF readers like a coordinated and synchronized network.

Ashley Stephenson, Reva Systems' CEO and cofounder, says, "Reva Systems' TAP provides advanced RFID reader management and location virtualization to eliminate cross reads. This is particularly important in the busy DCs, where there are thousands of tags and multiple RFID-enabled stations operating at the same time in close proximity. It is critical that the correct tag gets reported to the correct location."

Wyss says that Manor expects to increase its outbound shipping accuracy since fewer bar-coded labels must be scanned. It also envisions reduced shrinkage with the system since goods received will be compared with goods ordered as soon as they arrive, giving store managers a chance to immediately step in if boxes or crates are missing from a pallet.

Wyss will not say how much Manor invested in the project, but he says the company expects to recoup its investment within four years.

The project is not Manor's first RFID application. It is also using tags and temperature sensors to monitor freezers at grocery stores (see At Manor, RFID Keeps Food From Spoiling).