Department store Kohl’s has completed its installation of a radio frequency identification solution to track garments in select categories at its stores, as well as distribution centers. The technology was deployed by Checkpoint Systems, which provided middleware, integration, hardware, tags and labels. The deployment followed a pilot undertaken at 25 stores to gauge the effectiveness of reading passive EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags on garments during inventory counts. Now, a large number of strategic apparel items, including footwear, denim and men’s basics (such as underwear and T-shirts), are being tagged at various points along their supply chain, and then counted during regular inventory cycle counts via handheld readers.
Kohl’s, based in Menomonee Falls, Wis., operates stores throughout the United States, selling clothing, home and beauty products. In spring of 2012, the company began investigating the use of RFID technology to improve inventory accuracy by tagging select items and reading those tags during inventory counts. In the fall of 2012, the retailer expanded the technology to a pilot involving 25 stores. Following the successful pilot, Checkpoint and Kohl’s began planning the rollout to Kohl’s stores for the selected product categories in the spring of 2013, says Per Levin, Checkpoint’s president and chief sales officer for merchandise availability solutions.
The deployment provided initial tracking of only certain goods, Levin says. However, he notes, now that the technology is in place, expansion to other stock-keeping units (SKUs) will be easier to accomplish. Kohl’s DCs also went live with the technology, and vendors of the selected items are now tagging goods at the point of manufacture.
Checkpoint provides product factories in Asia and throughout the world with RFID labels printed and encoded by its own service bureaus, and the vendors then apply the tags to the items prior to shipping them to a customer’s distribution centers. At a DC, the tags can be read via handheld and/or fixed readers as they are received, and again as the items are shipped to a store.
Checkpoint’s flexible architecture can be configured in a variety of ways, ranging from centrally deployed to distributed architecture and cloud-based, as well as a combination of these, depending on a retailer’s IT infrastructure and business needs. At Kohl’s, Checkpoint’s solution is installed at the retailer’s central data center.
RFID provides improved operational visibility at the company’s stores, enabling personnel to know which items need to be replenished on the sales floor.
Kohl’s declined to comment for this story, though Levin points out that one of the key advantages of RFID is its ability to enable a retailer to increase its inventory accuracy and reduce the incidence of out-of-stocks. Once a retailer identifies RFID’s benefit during the pilot stage, Levin says, it can move forward to deploy the solution fast with Checkpoint.
Rolling out the solution to Kohl’s stores required that Checkpoint’s staff and contractors visit each site in order to prepare the store. Large-scale deployments, according to Levin, often involve steps to ensure that tags are read properly throughout a building. “This has been among the notable RFID projects that Checkpoint has deployed for its customers,” Levin states, describing the deployment as significant for the retail industry.
Retailers are increasingly moving beyond the pilot stage, signaling a shift to large-scale rollouts of RFID for item-level tracking in the retail environment, according to Alan Sherman, Checkpoint’s senior director of global marketing. “Two or three years ago,” he says, “you might see one store” in which the technology was installed. However, he adds, substantive gains result from full chain rollouts, with specific departments within each store.
“For Kohl’s, it’s all about the customer experience,” Levin says. By identifying what inventory is on the sales floor, he explains, store personnel can rapidly replenish goods, thereby ensuring that products are located where shoppers expect to find them.