Franco Motta
The Brazilian Beeight Group, from Cianorte (Parana State – PR), controls four brands certified by the Brazilian Textile Retail Association (ABVTEX), which includes carrying out an audit to certify production standards and guarantee the dignified working conditions of its employees. The brands are Six One, Yonders, Club Denim and Beeight. The group sells more than 2 million pieces per year, and decided to invest in a radio frequency identification (RFID) solution, from iTAG Etiquetas Inteligentes, to gain more agility, control and reliability in your Distribution Center (DC).
In addition to exclusive collections, the business group also develops apparel for major retail chains in the country. All of this production is generated in its own structure, divided into four units. There are more than 10,500 square meters and about 700 direct employees, being one of the largest job generators in the region and the fifth in its host city.
Through the use of RFID technology, Beeight achieved agility in the process of entering and leaving parts at the Distribution Center. According to Anderson Dias, executive of the group, “a process that used to take 20 to 30 minutes can now be done in 5 seconds; and balances that used to take a day to do now with the aid of the RFID collector can be done in half an hour ”.
In a simplified way, the iTAG system operates as follows: the RFID tags are printed by the warehouse and sent to the finishing area to carry out the sealing of the clothes. After that, the parts are sent to the finishing sector, where they go through the entry and dispatch process to the Distribution Center. “The process is carried out by reading RFID on a portal that is in the sector”, explains Dias, “which already integrates parts into the ERP [electronic business management system] stock”.
Based on this stock, orders for invoicing are generated which are prepared for invoicing, carried out with the help of two RFID portals to read the labels, returning quantity information and verification to confirm that it was consolidated correctly. “Then, the parts are packed and sent to our customers,” he added. “The gains already achieved with RFID involve more agility in the entry and exit of parts, which met all of our expectations”, says Dias.
The iTAG Monitor middleware has as its main functions the control of portals and the integration of information with the ERP used by the Beeight Group. “The assistance in integrating the system, with specialized technical support and supply of labels were the main benefits offered by iTAG”. Dias explains that he had no problems with the integration of the iTAG system with the ERP, despite the fact that the database is located in a data center. And he foresees continuing investments in technology: “now, we are working on an anti-theft system in our stores, using RFID”.
Before RFID, all goods had to be handpicked manually [nickname for the Barcode process]. “With RFID, we can read up to 40 pieces per box in less than 5 seconds,” says Dias. The RFID implantation follows the passive EPC UHF GS1 standard. “Today, we have three portals for product conference with tags and the readings are made through iTAG Monitor, which integrates the reading of the portals with our system. There are four Zebra Technologies readers and we use the iTAG 74X20 adhesive label, with Impinj chip, for the 80,000 pieces per month”.
At the beginning of the implementation, says Dias, the biggest challenge was the creation of new tags on which the RFID tags would be glued, since the tags could not be metallized to not cause interference at the time of readings. “Training our employees was one of the challenges. However, as it is an interactive system informing the beginning and end of the readings, we did not have many problems.”
