Several years ago, CYBRA began marketing a mobile ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID reader portal surrounded by a cage of metal mesh and mounted on removable wheels so that it could be easily moved to a user’s existing conveyor systems. Not only does the cage protect the RFID reader hardware from being damaged though contact with boxes, individuals or equipment, but the mesh’s half-inch by half-inch spacing is sized to keep the RF energy inside the cage. This enables it to prevent stray reads, the company explains, while still allowing users to see inside the cage to confirm that all is working properly.
The unit, known as the RFID Cage, can be pre-configured for each use case, CYBRA reports (in fact, its exact dimensions and shape vary according to the needs of a particular user’s conveyor system), and is designed to be fast, providing 99 percent read accuracy when conveyor lines move at speeds of up to 600 feet per minute. The cage comes with an Alien Technology F800 or Impinj R420 reader, says Mike Shabet, CYBRA’s sales and marketing VP, though it is hardware-agnostic, so other reader products would work with it as well.
Although Shabet declined to name customers that are using its RFID Cage, citing nondisclosure agreements, he was able to describe many of the ways in which they are doing so. In one case, an undergarment brand is utilizing the cage not only to meet retailers’ RFID-tagging mandates, but also to ensure that the EPC Gen 2 passive UHF tags do not conflict with those used for goods shipped for military use. Having two UHF tags attached to the same item can create a variety of errors during read processes, Shabet explains. It takes twice the amount of energy to activate both sets of tags, and twice as many responses are received and would then need to be filtered. In addition, tags touching each other could result in misreads. CYBRA’s RFID Cage takes the labor out of disabling some tags, while a handheld reader would require an individual to manually undertake the tag-disabling process at each carton.
The undergarment company, at times, ships batches of product to U.S. military branches, and must then comply with a different set of UHF RFID tag rules. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) requires that its suppliers use RFID labels that meet its specifications and employ a proprietary DOD-96 encoding scheme.
Without the RFID Cage, this has typically meant that the company would either need to set up a separate packaging line for DOD-destined garments, or remove the RFID tag it places on all products to meet its retailer customers’ requirements.
Since the company began using the RFID Cage, however, neither of these actions has been necessary. Instead, the DOD’s RFID tag is attached to the same packaging to which the standard EPC tag is affixed, and the product is placed on a conveyor dedicated to disabling the non-DOD tag by means of the RFID Cage.
Separately, the undergarment company employs seasonal workers during the winter holidays and at other times when retailers place a high volume of orders, since mistakes are more likely to happen with orders filled during those periods. The RFID Cage enables the firm to catch errors and identify if additional training is required, or if specific pickers are making numerous mistakes. First, the RFID Cage is wheeled to a seasonal pack-and-ship line. Seasonal workers indicate, in CYBRA’s EdgeMagic software—using a computer screen wired to the reader—their identity and which order they are filling. The carton’s bar-coded ID number, used during the packing operation, is captured via a bar-code scanner, and is logged in the EdgeMagic software on the company’s server, where it is linked to that packer’s order.
Workers then pack cartons based on the purchase orders, placing them on the conveyor to be routed to an outbound pallet. Along the way, the cartons pass through the RFID Cage, which has an omni-directional bar-code scanner that captures each box’s bar-coded serial number, while the RFID reader captures the tag IDs of the carton’s contents. Based on carton-related data from the DC’s warehouse-management software, EdgeMagic will accept or reject each box. For every rejected carton, EdgeMagic will send a signal to a diverter to push it off the line, and will log that activity. The rejected carton will then be reworked and the corrected box will be put back in line.
The cage captures the tag ID numbers and forwards them to the EdgeMagic software on the user’s database, which confirms whether the carton has been packed properly, displaying an alert on the screen at the packing site in the event that the systems detects a mistake. The software sends a report to management indicating a summary of how many and what kinds of errors were made. Seasonal packers with good performance records can then be dispatched to the main line, and are better positioned for permanent full-time employment. Using the RFID Cage in this manner is less labor-intensive than utilizing handheld readers, the company explains, and is less expensive than setting up fixed reader portals at up to 12 different locations.
The company has been using three of the cages for several years, Shabet reports, and is now adding functionality in the EdgeMagic software to indicate where a particular cage is located when reads take place, in order to create a summary of activity throughout the facility. For instance, the software can initialize an RFID Cage to perform many different functions, such as disabling tags in the morning, recording in-bound shipments in the afternoon and validating out-bound shipments in the evening.
A different company is also using three RFID Cages within its distribution center to track the shipments of accessories that it sells at its specialty stores. In this case, the retailer needs to verify whether goods are being loaded onto the proper truck, and to then send an advance shipping notice. Workers scan a bar-coded ID number on the carton linked to the purchase order and store that ID, along with where the shipment is destined to go. As the conveyor moves the carton through the RFID Cage, the ID numbers of the tags attached to products packed inside are displayed on the screen, which shows the carton count to the manual sorter, who can then match that data against the count printed on the shipping label. If the quantities match, the box is placed on that store’s pallet and an advance shipping notice is sent out. The RFID Cage, driven with the EdgeMagic platform, processes 30 to 36 cartons per minute, Shabet says. “That is at high speed, with minimal distance between cartons,” he states. “Neither standard handheld nor fixed readers can achieve those metrics.”
The company is utilizing other types of RFID readers at its stores, to know which products they have received and which are onsite or stored at another location. (Increasingly, Shabet says, some companies are installing trailers or other temporary off-site storage facilities, where goods can be staged so that they can be easily accessed if mall stores with limited storage space need them on display.) The accessory company is using fixed readers, in addition to Alien 9010 handhelds with EdgeMagic software, to assist with inventory checks. At approximately a dozen of its stores, the firm has installed an Impinj R420 reader between its back room and sales floor, enabling it to interrogate every tag as product is moved in either direction. (A motion sensor detects when merchandise is passing by and prompts the R420 to begin reading tags.)
In that way, the company can use the EdgeMagic software to determine when goods have been moved to the store front, and thus need to be replenished in the back room, or when products are being relocated from the front to the rear, meaning that they will either be shipped or held for an online customer. In that case, a replenishment order is also required. Staff members utilize the handhelds in the storage trailers to update inventory counts at those locations.
A third customer using the RFID Cage is a company that markets a popular brand of men’s shirts. The garments are manufactured throughout several countries and are shipped to the company’s U.S. distribution center, which then forwards those products to retailers, sometimes in other countries. This complex shipping environment requires additional effort when it comes to creating shipment paperwork, the company notes, since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that the country of origin must also be listed when a product is shipped internationally. Without the RFID system, employees previously had to look at each shirt’s label, then enter data onto an export document that would travel with the goods to, for instance, Canada or Latin America.
With the CYBRA system in place, this process is eliminated. When a shirt is manufactured, a factory worker encodes a tag and attaches it to the clothing’s packaging. The tag’s ID is automatically linked to such data as the product’s stock-keeping unit (SKU) and country of origin. When workers at the U.S. DC pack a carton, they simply put the products inside the box, close it up and place it on the conveyor, where the RFID Cage’s reader captures the tag IDs as the carton moves to the palletizing area. An export document can then be printed, listing the origin countries of all products contained within. The cage is necessary because it can read the items within a carton moving at production speed, and is able to detect only those items in the specific carton. According to Shabet, standard fixed or handheld systems cannot validate 30 to 36 boxes per minute.
The men’s shirt brand is also using the RFID Cage to generate a tag vendor “score card” that identifies when tags are working properly, as well as whose tags they are and from what service bureaus they originated. This shirt company purchases its tags from a variety of service bureaus and geographical locations. The portal captures the performance attributes of each individual Electronic Product Code (EPC) tag and records the results, and the software then generates reports by source and region, according to who has the most consistent-performing tags, as well as which providers and locations have serious performance and encoding issues, before those tags proceed further into the supply chain.
Shabet says that new use cases for the RFID Cage continue to be identified as customers begin thinking beyond simple inventory control. Because the cage is versatile and can be moved to the specific location where and when it is needed, he states, “One of our end users called it ‘the gift that keeps on giving.'”