RFID Technology - Intelligent Retail Management

The application of UHF RFID in retail has a history of 15 years, in the process the traditional clothing enterprises, supermarket chains use a large number of electronic tags, in the field of UHF RFID has the largest market share. With the development of market demand and China's unique needs, the outbreak of new retail applications and the demand for anti-counterfeiting and traceability, this section will focus on the traditional clothing retail as well as innovative new retail and anti-counterfeiting and traceability applications to start to explain.

Apparel Retail
UHF RFID, due to non-contact, long reading distance, fast identification, large amount of stored data, the application is getting wider and wider, has been recognized and used in more and more fields. Apparel retail industry is the most important market of UHF RFID, starting from Macy's, to Zara, Decathlon, Uniqlo, and then to the domestic brands such as Hellas House, LaSabelle and so on, the development is rapid. UHF RFID technology can be from clothing production, processing, quality control, warehousing, logistics and transportation, distribution, sales and other aspects of information management, so as to create a new field of clothing retail management.
Industry Pain Points
After years of development in the field of apparel retailing, digital management has been realized, which has 4 main links: production link, warehousing and logistics link, store link, and data decision-making link, and its industry pain points are analyzed as follows:
Production link:
High production cost.
Production management efficiency is low.
Difficult to produce on demand.
The traditional manufacturing process is mainly based on planned production, and the content of the production order also lacks accurate data to guide, especially the large-scale assembly line production process coordination. It is easy to produce waste, wrong production or production of products is not the market demand, thus leading to a decline in production efficiency and increased losses.
Warehousing and Logistics Segment:
Inefficient inbound and outbound inventory management.
Inventory inaccuracy, low inventory efficiency.
Bulk goods, returns sorting problems.
Difficult to realize the tracking management of goods.
Traditional warehousing using two-dimensional code technology points, with electronic sorting label technology to collect data during the operation to solve the above problems. However, the enterprise every day the number of products in and out of the warehouse is large, the operation volume is huge, and the production warehouse operation is frequent. Large quantities in and out of the warehouse, the operator needs to scan the bar code on each package one by one to collect the information of goods in and out of the warehouse. This is time-consuming, inefficient and prone to problems such as mis-scanning, omission and re-scanning.
Store link:
Difficulty in taking inventory and finding goods.
Commodity theft and tampering.
Customer demand is not allowed.
Poor consumer experience.
Inventory is an important part of warehouse management operations, the purpose of which is to check the number of books and inventory of physical quantities, in order to find differences in accordance with the procedures set out in a timely manner to correct errors, to ensure that the data on the books to reflect the real situation of inventory, the reality is that the inventory is difficult to get the inventory of the work of the implementation of a thorough and punctual, because the implementation of the inventory of the premise is that it must be a temporary halt to the warehouse of the warehouse operations to ensure that the physical Quantity and the number of books at the same point in time, so that the calibration is meaningful. However, the environmental conditions in all aspects of the decision of the enterprise simply can not do to put the inventory in a static state long enough to ensure that the completion of the inventory.
Data Decision Making Link:
Basic data is not timely and accurate.
Insufficient in-depth data analysis.
Low degree of data visualization.
Insufficient depth of data and business integration.
Although the enterprise spends a lot of human and financial resources, equipped with advanced ERP system, but the source of data information in the whole information system lacks the guarantee of reliability. All the data are derived from manual keying, and manual errors in the operation can not be avoided, the occurrence and accumulation of these errors, so that the utility of advanced computer management information systems greatly reduced.
Solution
In order to effectively improve the effect of the whole clothing retail management, it is necessary to integrate UHF RFID technology, cloud computing, big data and other technologies, through the raw materials, semi-finished products, finished products, transportation, warehousing, inventory, distribution, sales, returns processing, and so on almost all the links, to achieve the accurate management of the whole life cycle of the goods, open source for the enterprise, and to enhance the profitability and efficiency. As shown in Figure 8-1, the overall implementation of UHF RFID in the field of clothing.

Figure 8-1 Overall implementation plan for the apparel sector

The tag factory is where the UHF RFID tags are produced, and specific electronic tags such as hangtags are produced for the needs of that apparel retail product, and the chip data is printed and written. These written data is the whole system after big data calculation decision-making pushed over, with real-time and accuracy.

Clothing factories in the process of clothing production will be equipped with electronic tags hanging in the clothing, production is completed after boxing and shipping. At this time you can use UHF RFID batch identification advantage, packing review and delivery confirmation, to ensure that no leakage, not good hair.

In the warehousing and logistics links, with the aid of UHF RFID, you can realize the batch warehousing, warehouse picking, diverse inventory and shipping review function.

In the store link, UHF RFID application expansion is very much, including through RSSI plus filtering function to realize the function of fast finding goods and through the identification of electronic tags ID to help customers try clothes intelligently function and so on. It also supports inventory collection, quick inventory, display management, interactive marketing, return and transfer, intelligent shelves, intelligent anti-theft, internal control management and so on.

All the data in the above links will be entered into the retail big data platform in real time, which will again be used for data mining, commodity digital management and supply chain digital management. As shown in Figure 8-2, all the data are delivered to the cloud in real time and processed centrally.

Figure 8-2 Smart Retail Data Transfer

From the perspective of hardware analysis, it is necessary to install all-in-one readers at the workstations of the garment factories, and fixed multi-antenna readers at each shipping and receiving; 2-3 handhelds are configured in each store, as shown in Figure 8-3 for the inventory of shelf goods and stacked merchandise by store staff.

Figure 8-3 Schematic of Store Inventory