Staples Business Depot, Staples Inc.’s 240-store Canadian unit, along with three of its suppliers and a logistics provider, are carrying out a two-phase field trial to evaluate the benefits of deploying EPC technology. The participants in the first phase are Unisource, which provides private-label office paper goods to Staples; and logistics provider UPS Supply Chain Solutions, the supply chain business arm of the United Parcel Service. Fellowes and Acco, both manufacturers of office products, will join the trial in its second phase.
All participants are members of the Supply Chain Network Project, a consortium of retailers, suppliers and logistics providers (see Group Studies Supply Chain Technology). The group is managed by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Canada and led by Jeff Ashcroft, vice president of logistics and supply chain, in PWC’s Advisory Services. The member organizations of the Supply Chain Network Project collaborate on projects aimed at bringing new technologies into the supply chain. The Supply Chain Network Project is leading the trial. Bell Enterprise Group, an information communications and technology arm of Canadian telecommunications firm Bell Canada, is working with all participants and technology providers and serving as systems integrator.
John-Pierre Kamel, the RFID practice leader for the Bell Enterprise Group and the project’s lead integrator , says his group has begun architecting the project, working with Houston-based Shipcom Wireless to design the software that will be used in the trial, joining with the Supply Chain Network Project to build the business case for the trial’s initial and later phases, and establishing the workflow. Holtsville, N.Y.-based Symbol Technologies will provide RFID readers (interrogators) operating at 915 MHz and compliant with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 standard. Bell Enterprise Group has not yet selected a source of the Gen 2 smart labels it will use in the trial. Participants will use a Symbol handheld RFID interrogator to encode the RFID tag embedded in the smart labels during the first phase of the trial. But the architects of the trial have not yet decided if the participants will use RFID printer-encoders or these handheld devices to encode the tag during the second half of the trial.
“The manufacturers will be taking a slap-and-ship approach to tagging,” says Andrew Mitchell, director of wireless solutions for Bell Enterprise Group. Should these companies decide to continue evaluating the technology after this project is completed, however, they will move the tagging of the cases back to the point of manufacturing, he says.
For the first phase of the trial, which will last 45 days, Unisource will tag selected cases and pallets of goods bound for either a Staples Business Depot store or an RFID-enabled Staples distribution center. Both the store and the DC are in the Toronto area. UPS Supply Chain Solutions, which operates a warehouse for Staples’ private-label goods, will tag cases of these goods as well as those from a variety of manufacturers. It will aggregate thecases onto pallets in order to fulfill Staples’ orders. The second phase of the trial will be identical to the first, with the exception that Fellowes and Acco will also begin shipping select cases and pallets with RFID labels to the Staples locations.
Kamel says the length of the second phase has not yet been determined. Acco, Fellowes, Unisource and UPS Supply Chain Solutions will handle the tagging at their respective distribution centers, which are in and around Toronto, using Shipcom Wireless software to commission the EPCs to the tags. Some pallets will carry a single SKU, while others will be loaded with a mixture of SKUs. “Each pallet will have an advance shipment notice (ASN) associated with it. As each shipment is received, we will do a comparison of what was brought through the portal reader with what was listed on the ASN,” says Kamel. Staples will attempt to capture both the pallet tag and the case tags as each pallet passes through the reader.
Bell Enterprise Group is striving for read rates as close to 100 percent as possible on the pallets of goods that enter the Staples DC and store. Many products from Fellowes have high metal content, which could cause interference with the RF signal. Another possibly problematic product is paper. Pallets full of printing paper are so dense that the interrogators might not be able to excite the tags attached to the inner cases.
In addition to systems integration services, Bell Enterprise Group will also analyze the workflow within the participants’ facilities, both before and during the trial. The goal will be to see how disruptive the RFID tagging operation is to present business processes, and to suggest how these processes might be adjusted to accommodate RFID.
Kamel says he is hoping the manufacturers and UPS will begin tagging goods for the trial during February or March of next year. Once the project is completed, Bell Enterprise Group will work with Staples and the Supply Chain Network Project to evaluate the results. Staples might decide to follow up with another RFID field trial, involving more of its suppliers. It might also move forward with some type of tagging initiative with its suppliers, either on a voluntary basis or also as a mandated requirement, says Kamel.
Though Bell Canada’s Enterprise Group has done some work with RFID technology in the past including an early-stage evaluation of how it might use RFID within the carrier’s telephone equipment supply chain—this is the first end-to-end RFID project the group has led. RFID and other wireless technologies are a strong focus for the Enterprise Group. “We seek to develop and acquire best-of-class expertise [in RFID],” says Mitchell. “We’ve recently acquired two companies based in Canada. One, called The Createch Group, focuses on supply chain solutions, and the other, Popware, provides asset-management solutions. Both organizations have expertise in their industries and RFID and wireless technologies.”