Edson Perin
Privalia, an online fashion outlet created in 2006 in Barcelona, Spain, seeks to innovate in technology and partnerships in integration with its suppliers. At the Extrema branch, in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, the company is using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology together with two major product suppliers, Porto Brasil Ceramics and AMC Textile.
In this way, Privalia takes advantage of the suppliers’ RFID tags and makes an integration with the iTAG alert 2.0 application, from iTAG Etiquetas Inteligentes, controlling the flow of goods and their stock through RFID reading with collector BlueBird, using GS1 standards.
The store is online and offers daily sales of products from big brands at exceptional prices and exclusively for its customers. “Currently, we have more than 34 million registered users worldwide,” explains Flavio Pagano, Privalia’s quality manager. “Our company is a leader in all the markets in which it operates: Spain, 2006; Italy, 2007; Brazil, 2008; and Mexico 2010. And it has established itself as a reference for the sector”.
The customer process is structured in a systemic way, with the supplier billing the products and sending the information to the cloud. “For example, we can understand the flow from the moment the supplier Porto Brasil Cerâmica ships its products and loads them onto the truck,” he says. “Checked information is indicated in the iTAG alert 2.0, which makes it possible to extract data for sending and importing into Privalia’s environment.”
The operational flow is defined as follows: first, the Privalia operator receives the import file from Porto Brasil Cerâmica, which contains product data, from EAN13 to the product’s EPC. After confirming the data, the system makes the import into the iTAG alert 2.0 software.
Afterwards, another operator – responsible for checking the merchandise – uses the iTAG Monitor Mobile tool, which captures the invoice number and manages to check all products via RFID collector when unloading the truck.
“The main objective of this project is to streamline RFID conferences for all our customers, and for that we will take one step at a time, integrating supplier to supplier until the entire logistics chain can benefit from the technology”, emphasizes Pagano. “We learned that for this process we need to use a known standard EAN13, as only with this standard we can do all the decoding of the products when receiving the products”.
As the project takes off, the company gains in accuracy and speed in stocks. “With the achievements, the company is thinking of evolving the RFID project to other logistical points in the distribution center, where with the help of iTAG in the analysis of the knowledge process in RFID technology, we were able to prepare for the evolution that the technology could provide us with” .
The next object is to streamline the receipt of other suppliers and prepare the Distribution Center (DC) so that the entire flow is through RFID and, therefore, being able to replicate to other logistics centers, bringing countless benefits and savings opportunities for the company.
