Nordic Clothing Company Uses RFID Technology To Improve Inventory Accuracy.

Nordic clothing company MoN recently deployed in 13 stores

To better manage inventory.

For 6 months, two store pilot projects promoted sales of stores (not just labelled products).

Later this year, fourteenth stores will also deploy this technology.

The RFID pilot system includes attaching to men's shirts and

The label and the convenient reader installed on the store floor.

The system can provide 98%-99% inventory accuracy and reduce the time spent on manual inventory.

MoN Petter Hans H Bert, a supply chain manager, said the results encouraged the management of the company, and now the company wants to extend the use of the system to other areas.

The company is testing an electronic anti-theft system (export fixed reader) in a store, and plans to install a fixed reader in the warehouse.

H Bert said he had heard of the application of RFID technology in the inventory management of retail stores.

At the GS1 conference held in Oslo last year, he had a conversation with Holland company Nedap.

He said that the use of RFID by MoN is a natural thing. Companies need to quickly replenish their stores and ensure inventory accuracy.

If the replenishment is not in time, customers will not see the items they need, which will lead to a decline in revenue.

The company also hopes to provide online customers with services for store delivery.

At present, online buyers of MoN can not pick up goods from nearby stores, partly because the company has not yet found a solution to ensure adequate inventory.

The company believes that the inventory accuracy is only 75%-80%, so the company can not guarantee that customers need to have the goods.

H Bert said that the average inventory accuracy of the industry is less than 70%. He believes that MoN has done better than most enterprises.

In January of this year, MoN began testing the solution provided by Nedap, which included a handheld reader, a iPod Touch equipped with Nedap software, and a data analysis software stored in the cloud.

Nedap's Norway partner Infratek is responsible for the installation of the system.

MoN chose two stores in Oslo and Stryn as a pilot store.

The company marked two categories of products: Boys' shirts and suits.

Labels are attached inside the clothes, and the reader on the store floor will capture the information of these labels.

During the pilot period, staff use two times a week! D handheld reader and iPod store inventory.

Nedap RFIP Product Manager Danny Haak, which is easy to use, takes the place of the traditional clumsy handheld reader.

D reader includes a button, the employee reads the label, and the data is automatically pmitted to iPod.

H Bert says ease of use is the

The biggest selling point.

He added that most of the salespeople were young people, very familiar with iPod and Bluetooth, so the whole process was not too difficult.

Before the pilot project, the two stores need to spend 30-40 hours to check.

Now, the total inventory time has been reduced to 15 minutes.

In early July, MoN intends to extend the system to 11 other stores.

The company said the whole deployment took several weeks, and 13 stores are now using RFID technology to conduct stocktaking.

H Bert says that in most cases, the accuracy of inventory is very high, and employees only need to review once a month for two times.

At the same time, the company also extended the use of RFID to third types of clothing: Men's trousers.

In 2015, MoN also planned to apply this technology to children's wear, sportswear, women's clothing and footwear products.

Next, MoN intends to integrate RFID software with the company's ERP system, so that inventory data will automatically be sent back to the company's back-end software.

In addition, MoN plans to record the movement of clothing from storeroom to store by using this system, so as to ensure the accuracy of storehouse inventory.

Haak said that in order to achieve this, Nedap will provide a D top wall reader to record the movement of clothing.

At present, at the outlet of a store, MoN is testing D 8.2 MHz EAS and passive UHF RFID reading device.

In this way, UHF will automatically send out supplementary inventory requests after reading the ID number of the goods away from the store.

H Bert said that due to the use of RFID technology, the company achieved two digit sales growth of tagged goods.

He attributed this to the promotion of employee happiness.

He said, "I hope to see this result in other stores."

H Bert added: "the company hopes that employees can do less value-added activities.

When we use RFID to liberate employees, employees will do what they love to do: provide excellent customer experience. "