Taking a Gamble on RFID
One RFID application Repacorp worked on enabled a plant nursery to tag trays of seedlings spread out over 700,000 square feet. With the seedlings planted in trays and not yet sprouted, the employees needed an efficient way to track and identify the trays when pulling orders. The company opted for an RFID-enabled wand system which, when passed over the trays, reads the labels on the seedlings to reveal batch number, seed lot and flower type. “Before, it could take hours and hours to walk around and locate a missing item, which meant other orders were not being filled and money was being lost,” observed Heinl. “Before the RFID project, the nursery spent [three or more] days picking orders and getting them to ship in their complete form. With the integration of RFID, [it] has been able to [pick and ship orders in] under one day, which in the nursery’s eyes is an improvement of 300 percent in gained efficiencies. Any type of gained efficiency will certainly be reflected [in] the bottom line, helping to show ... ROI. The positive about new implementations, such as [this], is [the] nursery will tell another nursery, and help create awareness and add more uses for RFID.”
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