- The paper products company met Walmart’s RFID tagging mandate and ensured that its tags are operable without errors using FineLine’s QC Trak app.
- FIneLine is now releasing the app commercially to be used with Zebra handheld and sled readers to check readability, correct EPCs, UPC links and encryption.
As more consumer goods brands are applying RFID technology to products to meet retailer mandates, they run the risk of noncompliance due to RFID encoding or tag placement errors. That can mean charge-backs from those retailers.
Applying RFID tags to products has been one challenge, but ensuring the tags work properly, on the right product, is a second hurdle for many companies. If tags are not operable, or placed on the wrong product, companies can be fined for their mistake.
New Jersey-based paper products company Paris Corporation has stayed at the front of the curve of RFID deployment as it meets Walmart mandates, by introducing RFID tagging for all products headed to the retailer, but also ensuring that they are working correctly. They are using an app provided by their tag provider FineLine Technologies, known as QC Trak.
New Product from Paris
The QC Trak mobile app is based on a quality control process FIneLine has been using internally since 2013. This summer, the company launched a new version, commercially available to its RFID tag customers, for use with the Zebra TC 22 and the RFD readers.
Berdj Mazmanian, senior product manager for Paris Corp, an early adopter of the app, has been investigating RFID for several decades, “but nothing to the depth that I’ve had to get into in the last 18 months,” since Walmart mandated RFID tagged products from its suppliers.
Over the past year, the stationary company has been tagging Walmart destined products. And during that time, Mazmanian said “it’s been a long road, both in understanding how to deploy it and finding the right partners.”
Meeting Retailer Mandate
Paris Corp. selected FineLine’s RFID tags, as well as acquiring machinery that applies tags in the production lines. The company began programming (or encoding) the tags in-house as products were manufactured. Other products came in from third-party supplier with pre-encoded tags.
For both kinds of tags, Paris needed a way to ensure they were properly encoded and matched the product.
So about eight months ago the company began using QC Trak.
App Download and Off-the-Shelf Reader
Mazmanian registered and downloaded the app on his phone and uses an off-the-shelf RFID handheld reader that plugs into it.
“That allows me to verify all the tags that I’m receiving whether they’re programmed when they are coming into the facility, or [are] the tags that we’re programming, to assure all the data is correct,” said Mazmanian.
FineLine provided a rudimentary tutorial to use the app. Since then, employees have caught errors before the labels could be applied to products and sent to Walmart. Mazmanian noted “I’ve caught a number of mistakes in our process,” related to in-house programming, setting the UPC barcode, EPC RFID number and correct serialization.
Paris Corp’s phased RFID adoption bagan with meeting retailer mandates. Phase two will include leveraging RFID tags for in-house inventory checks, followed by integrating the data collection into the company’s ERP system so that tag reads can trigger ordering or a view into shipping data for inventory management.
FineLine Releases App
Paris Corp’s experience with RFID technology is an example of the disruption that its deployment can bring into a supply chain or tagging program, said Danika Manchester, FineLine’s product management director.
“There’s no RFID school you can go to [for] merchandise tagging,” Manchester pointed out. For many companies with little RFID familiarity, “we see a lot of people tagging just to meet compliance and not necessarily implementing all the quality checks” that could help determine whether tags are properly applied and working.
So for FineLine, “it’s about presenting the customer with a very simple quality control tool to show them what data is encoded on tags,” said Manchester.
The app tracks the UPC and EPC number link, the proper readability of the tag where it has been applied, and identifies whether the tag is properly locked so that it can’t be altered by a third-party.
Meeting Market Demand
Demand for tagging assistance is on the rise among consumer goods companies as apparel companies have a longer history with RFID technology, said George Hoffman, FineLine’s CEO.
FineLine has provided the app to retailers to help them evaluate vendor submitted, tagged-goods samples. The technology company will go to stores to conduct surveys on behalf of retailers and brands to confirm proper tagging and ensure they can be read correctly, said Hoffman.
The app links to FineLine’s FASTtrak software platform. Therefore, companies can upload these scans to a cloud-based server hosted by FineLine to create a record of having conducted quality control on tagged items.
That record could help companies provide the manufacturer with credibility, to validate there is a quality control process in place.
Companies are expected to use QC Trak during the early RFID deployment process, but it can continue to be used to support quality processes as a mobile QA station. Such a station could be used even as the manufacturer implements more automated quality control using fixed readers in their production lines.