The following are news announcements made during the past week by the following organizations:
Metalcraft, Technologies ROI; TECSYS; and IHL Group.
Metalcraft, Technologies ROI Partner on RFID Metal Nameplates
Metalcraft has announced an agreement with Technologies ROI (TROI) to serve the industrial market for radio frequency identification. The licensing agreement combines each company’s technologies to produce RFID metal nameplates.
Metalcraft manufactures a variety of customized asset tags, including unique ID (UID), bar-code and/or serialized tags for asset tracking and/or identification, as well as RFID tags, including harsh-environment and metal-mount tags. TROI offers RFID tags for use around oil and gas (including down-hole and sub-sea), corrosive chemicals (Teflon-encapsulated and in-line inspection) and construction sites (to be embedded in tools and road surfaces, including concrete, asphalt, wood, plastic and metal).
“Our partnership with TROI advances Metalcraft’s leadership and innovation in durable identification products,” said Steve Doerfler, Metalcraft’s president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “Metalcraft sees the value our durable RFID products deliver in challenging environments, and we are eager to harness TROI’s intellectual property to bring RFID technology’s benefits to extremely harsh applications currently relying on metal nameplates.”
Patrick King, TROI’s founder, added in the prepared statement, “With Metalcraft’s universal metal-mount label technology and TROI’s patent U.S. 9,122.967, our two leadership positions are brought into beneficial union. We aim to change the nature of metal ID marking for the industry.”
TECSYS Extends RFID Kanban Replenishment System to Broader Distribution Industries
TECSYS, a supply chain management software company, has announced an RFID-based kanban inventory-replenishment system designed to address the needs of supply chains at point-of-use inventory settings. According to the company, the system provides visibility and accessibility of products throughout a distribution network, automates replenishment based on real-time consumption, captures usage data, and reduces costs and cash tied up in inventory.
“After a decade of proven ROI in the demanding healthcare provider industry, we are extending our latest RFID Kanban System to an underserved and broader distribution operation’s market,” said Robert Colosino, TECSYS’ VP of marketing, in a prepared statement. “These industries are facing significant challenges of volatile and unpredictable demand, lack of inventory visibility and costly supply chain processes. Our RFID Kanban System addresses these challenges head-on, freeing workers from the time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.”
TECSYS’ RFID Kanban System is built to lower costs, relieve workers from time-consuming inventory-management chores and enable them to access supplies quickly and easily from anywhere within an organization’s distribution network. Product and usage information are captured in the TECSYS system, the company reports, enabling purchasing organizations to track usage, re-order goods automatically and plan demand accordingly, and thereby virtually eliminate stock-outs. The solution is designed to address such challenges as maintenance and repairs (MROs), parts distribution, health-care products distribution, utilities, education, municipalities and other general-businesses challenges at the point of use.
The system is set up with a pre-established demand-based quantity of products, divided between two compartments of a storage module on the kanban shelf. When products in the first compartment are consumed, the last person to pick a particular item transfers that product’s identification RFID tag to a TECSYS smart panel, located near the storage unit. Placing the tag on the smart panel triggers an automated replenishment request before critical supply levels are reached. Logistics personnel can then begin using items from the second compartment, which holds a level of inventory based on consumption within a pre-defined span of time.
After workers place all product tags on the smart panel, the system transmits the request to the supply management application. The application, in turn, generates a pick list for stock items or a requisition for direct purchase items, so that the company can refill products to their appropriate levels.
T3 Expo Launches App for Shipment at Trade Shows
T3 Expo, a general contractor for trade shows and corporate events, has announced its new T3 Tracker mobile app. The company created the app in collaboration with Intelligent Product Solutions (IPS), a product-development company that provides software and hardware engineering and industrial design services.
The mobile app, available currently on the Google Android platform, is intended for marketing executives and event coordinators trying to locate goods that have been shipped to a trade show. During such an event, various deliveries are dropped off at the show site, along with hundreds of thousands of other deliveries. Previously, marketers and corporate executives were unable to track or locate what had been delivered by FedEx, UPS or the U.S. Postal Service on the convention show floor in an easy, systematic manner. According to the companies, the app makes facilitates this task.
Customers traditionally ship their packages to a convention center’s central receiving location, where they are left by a mail carrier. This, according to the company, can cause confusion and anxiety—particularly when a package has been delivered to a building spanning more than a million square feet.
“T3 Tracker now allows event coordinators to track and find packages, anywhere on the show floor,” said Chris Valentine, T3 Expo’s chief executive officer, in a prepared statement. “The new app allows faster turnaround, and greater sharing of accurate information and ease of tracking—all delivering peace of mind for any trade-show organizer.”
Once a mail carrier has marked trade-show packages as delivered, T3 Tracker begins providing information regarding the delivered packages’ location en route to the specific trade show, as well as the condition the package is in and when it will arrive directly to the booth. The mail carrier’s tracking number is associated with the T3 Tracker number and uses a custom RFID application built by IPS so that show managers know the status of their valuable assets.
“We were excited to incorporate our unique design thinking into an innovative app for T3 Expo that will help transform the tradeshow industry as we know it,” said Bob Wild, IPS’ VP of electrical, software and systems engineering, in the prepared statement. “Customers can now get end-to-end reporting of material shipped by T3 Expo, from shipping to delivery at the location of assembly, for their event. When we were asked to design, create and help pioneer something groundbreaking for T3 Expo and its customers, it was all about helping save important and valuable time and effort—while incorporating disruptive innovation to how things have ‘always been done’.”
Additional features include the ability to track shipment status, export exceptions via email (missing package, damage to shipment, etc.), automatically report shipment details to T3 Expo, attach descriptions or photographs of exceptions, and scan shipper bar codes and save them to T3 Expo’s database.
IHL Group Research Highlights Importance of RFID for Inventory Accuracy, Commerce
Tyco Retail Solutions has partnered with several industry groups to examine the value of RFID technology to help ensure inventory accuracy and enable store-level fulfillment. According to the company, new research from IHL Group validates the use of RFID to combat inventory distortion and increase inventory accuracy and visibility as the essential foundation for unified commerce.
IHL Group’s study, titled “Retail’s Inventory Distortion Problem: Sizing It All Up,” spotlights the global inventory distortion problem that retailers face. This combination of out-of-stocks and overstocks is an estimated $1.1 trillion problem for the retail industry. Because of this issue, the report explains, retailers lack confidence in their availability to promise on-hand stock and, as a result, are cautious in leveraging all item quantities for online sales and store-fulfillment options, such as buy online, pick-up in store (BOPIS). The risk to the customer experience is too high, the research indicates, as is the average 8.7 percent loss of total sales due to inaccuracy.
The key to offering various fulfillment options is having visibility into real-time inventory at every store, the study explains, enabled via item-level RFID. Adopting this technology and regular cycle-counting processes helps retailers to prevent inventory distortion, and can increase inventory accuracy up to 99 percent and maintain it at 95 to 99 percent. With enhanced inventory accuracy, the number of shoppers who can find the inventory they seek can increase sales by 5 to 25 percent.
“As today’s consumers continue to seek merchandise where and when they want it, retailers must prioritize the implementation of technology that supports a unified commerce strategy,” said Brent Brown, Tyco Retail Solutions’ VP and general manager for inventory intelligence and the Internet of Things, in a prepared statement. “RFID-based solutions enable retailers to confidently present accurate real-time in-stock positions to meet today’s customer expectations and maximize business outcomes.”