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Walgreens Opens RFID-Enabled Distribution Center
Walgreens uses plastic totes measuring approximately 2 feet by 18 inches by 12 inches. When an order is received, employees take a tote, load it with the proper goods, stack the loaded tote with others on a dolly and wheel the stack of totes to the dock door.
In the traditional system, workers would read printed lists of the items to be shipped, then use scanners to read bar-coded labels attached to the totes and access the warehouse management system via computer so they could check off the items they were shipping, and insure that a tote was properly loaded. This system made the truck-loading process cumbersome and error-prone—especially, Beans points out, since dozens of trucks are loaded at the same time, bound for different destinations.
With the Blue Vector system, all totes now have Avery Dennison RFID tags affixed to their sides. The empty totes are stacked in a storage area, where they await being loaded with product to be shipped. As each order manifest arrives at the DC, the warehouse management system automatically shares that manifest with the Blue Vector system server. As an employee places the filled totes on a conveyor, to be loaded on dollies, a Blue Vector portal captures the tote tags' ID numbers and links them with the manifest. "At that point," Beans says, "the system knows which item is loaded in that tote."
Filled totes are then loaded on the dollies (which are also tagged for redundancy) and rolled toward the dock doors, past an RFID portal. Manufactured by Blue Vector, the portal stands about 7 feet high and features a Motorola RFID interrogator and an LED screen that displays data related to those totes, including the location where they need to be loaded.
The dolly is then rolled to the appropriate dock door, where another Blue Vector portal scans the tag ID number of each tote, as well as the dolly, and emits a loud alert if the batch of totes approaches the wrong dock door, or if the batch is being loaded in the wrong order compared with others that need to be loaded.
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In the traditional system, workers would read printed lists of the items to be shipped, then use scanners to read bar-coded labels attached to the totes and access the warehouse management system via computer so they could check off the items they were shipping, and insure that a tote was properly loaded. This system made the truck-loading process cumbersome and error-prone—especially, Beans points out, since dozens of trucks are loaded at the same time, bound for different destinations.
With the Blue Vector system, all totes now have Avery Dennison RFID tags affixed to their sides. The empty totes are stacked in a storage area, where they await being loaded with product to be shipped. As each order manifest arrives at the DC, the warehouse management system automatically shares that manifest with the Blue Vector system server. As an employee places the filled totes on a conveyor, to be loaded on dollies, a Blue Vector portal captures the tote tags' ID numbers and links them with the manifest. "At that point," Beans says, "the system knows which item is loaded in that tote."
Filled totes are then loaded on the dollies (which are also tagged for redundancy) and rolled toward the dock doors, past an RFID portal. Manufactured by Blue Vector, the portal stands about 7 feet high and features a Motorola RFID interrogator and an LED screen that displays data related to those totes, including the location where they need to be loaded.
The dolly is then rolled to the appropriate dock door, where another Blue Vector portal scans the tag ID number of each tote, as well as the dolly, and emits a loud alert if the batch of totes approaches the wrong dock door, or if the batch is being loaded in the wrong order compared with others that need to be loaded.
