Indian Jeweler Gains Efficiency, Customer Service

The Feig handheld readers are used twice to take inventory of a store's stock—at the beginning of each day, and again at the end. Employees sweep the interrogators past every display and capture the unique ID number encoded to each tag. MphasiS RFID middleware then pass that data to the retailer's existing inventory-tracking system, which utilizes Microsoft's Visual Basic 6.0 and Access 2007 database platform. The ID number of each tag is linked to data regarding the corresponding item, including the type of jewelry, along with its weight and size. All of that information resides on B&BJ's inventory-tracking software. The entire system was installed and integrated by e-Xseed Technologies & Devices.

Whenever a customer requests information regarding a particular item, a salesperson can use an Omnikey PDA to read that item's tag ID number and provide data about it, including its price, based on that day's cost of gold. When the shopper is ready to make a purchase, the desired item is placed on the counter, where the RFID system captures its unique ID number and provides pricing information to the sales terminal, and the item is rung up by a salesperson. The MphasiS software then updates the B&BJ inventory records to show the jewelry has been sold, and the salesperson removes its RFID tag so it can be reused.

Vijay Maladkar, head of MphasiS India's RFID practice

The system took approximately four months to develop before installation, says Vijay Maladkar, head of MphasiS India's RFID practicedelivery. According to Maladkar, the company had already determined, through extensive research, that the MphasiS system should operate within the end user's existing back-end software. "We knew that we would want to develop an agnostic framework," he explains, adding that the goal was to create an RFID solution that would work with a variety of hardware systems, and back-end inventory management and billing systems. "If a customer has an existing inventory management system, for example, we can integrate with it."

The challenge with the B&BJ deployment, Maladkar says, involved finding RFID hardware able to offer a reliable read rate despite the presence of metal within the displays. Working with B&BJ and e-Xseed Technologies, the store was able to deploy the system without the need for changes. "The design is very intuitive from an end-user perspective," Gopalakrishnan says, necessitating no major training for the sales staff."

In the future, B&BJ hopes to include an RFID-enabled loyalty card system that the retailer's frequent customers could use to receive more personalized service and gain discounts based on their transaction history at the store. Eventually, the jeweler intends to install the system at all of its store locations.