Ed. Note: A version of this article originally appeared at IoP Journal.
Privalia, an online fashion outlet in Barcelona, Spain, seeks to innovate in terms of technologies and partnerships with suppliers. At the company’s Extrema branch, located in Minas Gerais, Brazil, the firm—which was launched in 2006—employs radio frequency identification together with two major product suppliers: Porto Brasil Ceramics and AMC Textile.
In this way, Privalia takes advantage of the suppliers’ RFID tags and integrates them with its Alert 2.0 application, provided by iTAG Etiquetas Inteligentes, to manage the flow of goods and stock via an RFID reader from BlueBird. The system complies with GS1‘s RFID standards.
The retailer offers daily sales of big-brand products exclusively to its customers. “Currently, we have more than 34 million registered users worldwide,” says Flavio Pagano, Privalia’s quality manager. “Our company is a leader in all the markets in which it operates—Spain (2006), Italy (2007), Brazil (2008) and Mexico (2010)—and it has established itself as a reference for the sector.”
The customer process is structured in a systemic way, Pagano says, with Porto Brasil Ceramics billing for products and sending information to the cloud. “For example, we can understand the flow from the moment the supplier ships its products and loads them onto the truck,” he states. “Checked information is indicated in iTAG Alert 2.0, making it possible to extract data for sending and importing into Privalia’s environment.”
The operational flow is defined as follows: A Privalia employee receives an import file from Porto Brasil Ceramics, which contains product data including an EAN-13 number and an Electronic Product Code. After confirming the information, the system imports it into the Alert 2.0 software, then another worker, who is responsible for checking merchandise, uses iTAG’s Monitor Mobile tool to capture the invoice number and check all products via an RFID reader as workers unload each truck.
“The main objective of this project is to streamline RFID management for all of our customers,” Pagano explains, “and for that we will take one step at a time, integrating supplier to supplier until the entire logistics chain can benefit from the technology. We learned that for this process, we need to use a known standard, EAN-13, since only with this standard can we do all the decoding when receiving products.”
As the project has taken off, Pagano reports, the company has achieved gains in terms of accuracy and speed in stock-taking. “With the achievements,” he says, “the company is thinking of evolving the RFID project to other logistical points at the distribution center, where—with the help of iTAG in analyzing the information collected by the RFID technology—we were able to prepare for the evolution that the technology could provide.”
The next goal, Pagano says, is to streamline the receipt of goods from suppliers, and to prepare Privalia’s DC so that the entire flow is carried out via RFID. The company hopes to be able to replicate its success at other logistics centers with regard to savings opportunities and other benefits, he adds.