Edson Perin
Declaus Confecções, from the city of Timbó (SC), discovered radio frequency identification (RFID) technology when Lojas Renner, One of its Private Label clients started to require the placement of RFID tags on clothes with its brand, so it could more efficiently control the entry of goods into the Distribution Center and forward them to stores throughout Brazil (learn more at Lojas Renner Raises Customer Approval with RFID).
Experience with iTAG Tecnologia RFID solution, fully integrated into the company’s Sisplan ERP management system, It was a success and, thus, Declaus started using radio frequency identification tags in all its products, including for customers such as C&A, company that is also in the process of adopting RFID, and Shoulder, which do not yet use the technology.
Producing and distributing more than 200,000 pieces of women’s fashion per month, Declaus also decided to manage the products it manufactures for its Cess online store with iTAG RFID tags. Marcos Aurelio Alves, industrial director at Declaus and responsible for the RFID project, states that assertiveness and agility were some of the benefits of the investment. “And, mainly, the reduction in orders returned because they had the wrong quantity. We reduced this type of problem to zero”, declared Alves.
“Our supplier iTAG played a very important role in our success, always meeting our needs, finding solutions that we needed that were different from those available, and most importantly: after-sales. It is a company that closely monitors its customers and the solutions are very quick and objective”, says the Declaus executive. “The implementation of RFID was a positive experience.”
Alves explains that the Renner Project, for label printing, has two middlewares, one provided by Sensormatic and the other by iTAG. “The one from Sensormatic does the printing and the one from iTAG does the checking, data validation and integration with ERP Sisplan. For logistics movements integrated with the ERP, we have three middlware provided by iTAG, the first of which is the iTAG Monitor, which decodes the labels read between the reader and the system. The second is iTAG Alert, which integrates the portals and the Sisplan ERP. The third is the Android Monitor that checks the parts in the factions and sends it to the cloud, where iTAG Alert is hosted, to send to the ERP Sisplan”.
For the Cess project, iTAG Iprint was adopted to record and print RFID tags integrating with Sisplan. “Cess was born in 2020, with the aim of bringing fashion to real women, with comfort and convenience being one of our differentiators, producing all pieces from PP to EGG, stylish and comfortable for all bodies”, explains Alves. “Cess is Declaus Confecções’ own brand, which for 30 years has always delivered products of extreme quality and comfort.”
Regarding Private Label brands, such as Renner, Alves says that Declaus is always looking for new alternatives to serve the customer, with international trips for research, we always look for differentiated raw materials that also meet sustainability, which is very important in our branch.
“Before RFDI, our conference was manual. We counted piece by piece to know what we had received from our sewing workshop, and each subsequent process was counted manually. What changed with RFID: we became more agile, parts counting is much faster and we trust the process,” he says.
The use of RFDI tags offers several advantages, according to Alves, such as the ability to track items in real time, reduce stock errors in inventories, speed up logistics processes and improve supply chain visibility. “As soon as we start the process of recording labels in the warehouse, we have an antenna that reads the labels and sends this information to our ERP (Sisplan), to facilitate reading in the next processes”.
“We have mobile readers that follow our truck to the sewing workshops and, before collecting, they load the iTAG system on their cell phone and start counting on the spot”, he says. “The count is checked and, upon entering the quantities, iTAG transfers the data to our ERP Sisplan, so we have immediate control of the quantity collected”.
In addition, explains Alves, we have an internal conference to check that all the processes after sewing that the piece will go through and, finally, the reading booth in shipping, where we read approximately 1,000 pieces at a time in the form of packs for dispatch. with the carrier.
“The biggest challenge”, said the Declaus executive, “was our third parties learning to deal with labels that cannot be folded, crushed or leave a piece without the label. Choosing the iTAG RFID solution was a joint decision with our largest client, Renner”.
Alves added: “Today our production is around 200 thousand pieces per month and we have achieved great agility and reliability in the process. If we didn’t have the RFID process, the quantity of parts produced would be smaller, because the time lost in the processes would prevent us from doing what we do today”.
As next steps, “we are working to ensure that our roll mesh stock is all RFID-enabled. Today we have an average of 50 tons of mesh rotating in the company. There are 2,500 rolls of mesh. We will therefore be tracking each roll of mesh to its final destination with RFID. To carry out inventories that took around two days, we will be able to do them in 2.5 hours”.
