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RFID for supply chain management and in-store operations from IBM
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| Pivotal to a truly intelligent supply chain
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A fast, responsive and flexible supply chain—with a laser focus on delivering value to the end consumer—is the key to streamlining workflow processes. RFID can improve your manufacturing and retail operations, from forecasting demand to planning, managing inventory and distribution, and improving the in-store customer experience.
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| The IBM advantage
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The RFID solution for supply chain management from IBM is built around our: - Long and deep experience in RFID and leadership in Supply Chain Management
- Ability to design and deploy a complete enterprise-wide RFID solution and connect it to multiple business applications
- Focused practice of more than 4,000 consultants dedicated to the distribution industry plus more than 2,000 dedicated wireless services professionals
- Partnerships with leaders in the RFID component industry and experience with their products.
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| Support consumer-driven supply strategies
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Streamline logistics, shipping, receiving and procurement operations, and promote tighter inventory controls.
Item level RFID inventory tagging and electronic labeling can enable efficient inventory and shelf-level management, and streamline stocking processes.
- Optimize pricing with on demand price-setting, based on inventory, shelf life, stock levels and customer preferences.
- Automate stock and shelf replenishment by automatically monitoring product quantity, placement and activity, and sending alerts to restock, rearrange or reorder as necessary.
RFID tags can allow you to track products from the back door to the selling floor and beyond to help you reduce shrink.
- Product authentication tracks the item along the entire product sales cycle, from manufacturing to post-sale return.
- Article monitoring allows you to automate supplier receiving and billing procedures to reduce manual entry errors, and helps eliminate fraudulent returns.
- RFID tags at the item-level allow you to monitor product leaving the store without being purchased.
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| Transforming a traditional supply chain
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IBM helped German-based METRO Group, the world’s fifth-largest retailer, develop an integrated RFID solution for its prototype Extra Future Store. Now METRO plans to become the first retailer to begin using RFID technology throughout its entire process chain.
The project is scheduled to begin in November 2004, and initially, 100 suppliers will tag all their pallets and transport crates for delivery to 10 of Metro’s central warehouses and 250 stores. As the RFID system integrator, IBM will lead the strategy, consulting, implementation and rollout for the project—even establishing a lab to test each supplier’s interoperability with RFID technologies. METRO will be able to track goods along the entire process chain to optimize order and inventory management, avoid out-of-stock situations and help reduce costs.
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| Direct benefits to your line of business
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IBM research on RFID indicates: - Data collection productivity for inventory and shipping can be increased by 10-20%, while maintaining virtually 100% accuracy.
- Retail store productivity can be increased by approximately 5% at the case level and 7% at the item level. In many cases, this labor can be reallocated to customer facing activities.
- About one-third of store execution issues can be resolved.
- Shrink can be reduced by two-thirds for manufacturers and nearly one-half for retailers.
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