Lemmi Fashion Changes Frequency

Lemmi will work with German RFID systems integrator Meco Group to manage the change throughout Lemmi's DC and three manufacturing facilities. As a certified reseller and integrator of Reva System's RFID reader networking infrastructure, Meco will install the Reva Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) servers. The TAP servers are rack-mountable appliances that will let Lemmi centrally control the network of Impinj Speedway UHF Gen 2 RFID interrogators that will be installed at each manufacturing facility and the DC. The TAP servers will link the networks of readers into Lemmi's local area network (LAN). They will also filter and aggregates tag reads before sending the tag data to the Microsoft Navision enterprise software the Lemmi uses as an enterprise resource planning platform.

Checkpoint Systems, which provides the HF (13.56 MHz) ISO 15693-standard tags that Lemmi uses today, will supply the EPC Gen 2-compliant tags for the new system. It will also handle the installation of the Impinj interrogators and other RFID hardware needed at the various facilities, such as antennas and portal read stations.

"We will continue to ship our remaining stock tagged with HF tags for approximately three months, until we will turn off the last remaining HF readers," says Pfeifferling. (The readers will be kept on hand for use in identifying returned HF-tagged items from Lemmi's retail partners.) But by November, he says, all goods that the company ships will carry UHF Gen2 tags.

In time, Lemmi may begin using the Checkpoint's hybrid UHF RFID-electronic article surveillance (EAS) tags (see Checkpoint Combines EAS Tags With RFID), but doing so would mean that all of its retailer customers would need to be able to deactivate and remove the specialized tags and would therefore need Checkpoint Systems equipment, which not all of them have presently.

Pfeifferling will describe Lemmi's plans for migrating to UHF at the RFID Journal-AAFA Apparel & Footwear Summit in New York City on Wednesday.