This article was originally published by RFID Update.
October 23, 2006—RTLS provider WhereNet today announced a deployment for Austrian third-party logistics provider Jobstl. Jobstl distributes clothing and fashion merchandise for Vogele, a clothes retailer with more than 750 locations across Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
The deployment is a closed-loop one, providing real-time visibility of the containers distributed by Jobstl to Vogele locations around Europe. Each container in the fleet is tagged with a WhereTag, and the dock doors at Vogele facilities are equipped with readers. Both Jobstl and Vogele installed the WhereLan infrastructure, covering more than 20,000 square meters. This combination of technology provides real-time visibility of the containers at Jobstl and Vogele premises. (There is a separate system for in-transit semiautomatic event verification as containers are shipped from Jobstl to Vogele.)
Global positioning satellite (GPS) technology was initially considered for the solution, but ultimately rejected as too expensive and impractical.
Jobstl is citing a number of benefits the automated RTLS system provides over the previous manual one, almost all of which derive from improved efficiency. The workflow process for yard drivers is now more automated. Laborious, time-intensive paper processing has been eliminated. Better container utilization has resulted in a 20% cost savings. Container tracking is greatly simplified and improved, which is expected to eliminate the problem of lost containers. Billing efficiencies have also been realized, with an order-to-cash cycle time reduction from one week to a half day. Finally, the focus of shipment management has shifted from manual processes to value-added tasks and exception handling.
Read the official announcement from WhereNet