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RFID tracking solution saves $20,000 a pallet
When Beaver Street Fisheries Inc. received a request from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for a $20,000 credit for a pallet of lobster tails that spoiled, the seafood and meat distributor turned to technology to resolve that matter.
The case in question had a RFID label affixed that is automatically recognized by readers at several points in the supply chain, feeding data to a system showing where it’s been and when. A trace of the serialized tag revealed that seven hours elapsed from when the case passed the reader at the Wal-Mart distribution center’s enterance until it passed the reader at the entrance to the freezer.
Such tracebility is only the beginning of what RFID can bring to companies that adopt it, said Hoard Stcokdale, chief information officer for Beaver Street Fisheries speaking to RFID Journal. Recognizing the technology’s potential, Beaver Street has created an RFID software and integration company, called Wavelength Integration Solutions Inc., which will launch its services this year. Stockdale is the new company’s president.
Because it’s a non-line-of-site technology, unlike bar codes, Stockdale sees RFID allowing greater automation and more detailed business intelligence collection that will make supply chains more scalable, responsive and efficient.
Although Wal-Mart had to absorb the cost of the lobster tails, it is happy with Beaver Sreet because it is a poster child for its efforts to drive RFID adoption.
Wal-Mart had mandated that its top 100 suppliers implement RFID into cases and pallets shipped to three Dallas-area distribution centers by January 2006. But Beaver Street, named for the Jacksonville street it’s been on for more than 50 years, voluntarily complied with the madate more than a year before then, one of the fewer than 40 small and mid-sized suppliers to do so.
Beaver Street’s pilot project involved three products from the company’s Sea Best brand: lobster tails with butter, tilapia fillets and snow crab. The company wanted to test products that used different pallet configurations.
Beaver Street’s RFID team, led by Stockdale, created a mobile RFID tagging station as a testing platform that led to a fixed, conveyor-based system. It also uses the mobile station for operations in areas where installing an in-line system is impractical.
The company was named Wal-Mart’s supplier of the year for 2005 and Stockdale was named as one of the “25 Consumer Goods Visionaries” by Consumer Technology magazine.
Beaver Street has gotten so far in front of RFID that other companies sought its advice. Wavelength followed.
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