Edson Perin
The radiofrequency identification (RFID) project at the Brazilian toy factory Calesita, from Pomerode (Santa Catarina State),came from the demand of one of its main customers: Havan, one of the largest retail store chains in Brazil. After studies by the IT team, the initiative was taken to implement it internally, even before was reached the deadline for delivering to Havan with smart tags.
“The IT team analyzed the equipment, printers and labels to make an RFID project where they could enjoy the benefits and serve their customer at the same time,” says Jeferson Hoppe, RFID executive at Calesita.
In the process of using the software tools of iTAG Etiquetas Inteligentes, RFID company that implemented RFID at the factory, Calesita encountered some barriers of consistency and quality of RFID reads. iTAG then had to change the RFID recording system, applying the GS1 SGTIN-96 standard, to meet both the internal and Havan projects.
iTAG implemented the iPRINT software at Calesita, responsible for generating the RFID tags in the GS1 standard, with which the tags are generated. Then, information about the process goes to the factory management system (ERP), which is Calesita’s own development.
For the movement of goods, iTAG implemented the iMonitor tool in the portals of the Calesita Group, where entries for the completion of the Production Order (OP) and exit are performed, checking the orders before going to the truck loading area.
For inventories and other logistical functionalities, says Hoppe, “ITAG has implemented the iTAG Alert 2.0 software which makes available to Calesita the inventory functionalities, RFID movement reports”. The first-in-first-out (FIFO) has an analysis application where all functionalities are concentrated in a single point, so that managers can easily perform the analysis.
Currently, Calesita uses the GTIN-13 standard in all brands of the business group. The same pattern also identifies each product’s box.
“The objective of this project”, says Hoppe, “is to identify the entire range of Calesita Group’s products, from the exit of the production area to the final customer, as is the case of large department stores like Havan. “And to achieve this objective, staggered processes were executed, where priorities were divided”. This division takes place as follows: 1st – Meet customer demand; 2nd – Bring gain with the opportunity for evolution; and 3rd – Evolve the project to the point of process automation.
“In these three topics”, Hoppe explains, “we had continuous evolutions in partnership with iTAG, which was responsible for introducing us to the GS1 standardization and the explanation of market cases and the gains we can achieve with the use of the tool”.
The printing of labels at Calesita follows its own standardization with an RFID tag for each product, applied to the box that takes them to the second step of the project: the verification and completion of the Production Order (OP). At this point, there is an RFID reader that records the passage of products.
After the conference and before RFID, the products were sent to stock, where they were stored until the time of picking to fulfill sales orders. Then the second conference began, now via RFID, in our logistical process, which was responsible for capturing the operator, order and products to be linked to the invoice, in order to serve Grupo Calesita’s customers.
“In parallel to this process, we started labeling the products with the standardization of our customer Havan”, recalls Hoppe. “As a result, we used the customer’s label on orders and this turned the process into a lengthy process that took time to prepare. So, we saw that it would be an important point of improvement and with that we looked for a company that already had experience in RFID projects and found ITAG so that we could optimize the processes.”
After hiring iTAG, some improvement points in the printing, checking and inventory processes were carried out. “The printing of labels was standardized with the iPRINT software, where we applied our EAN13 registration and used the EPC GEN2 standard approved by GS1, so that we could meet Havan’s requests, and so that we could streamline the order fulfillment.”
In the logistics handling portals, old readers were exchanged for Chainway UR4 readers and the iTAG Monitor software. At the site, integration operations were carried out to streamline the use of RFID readers. “We also changed the reader in the shipping area so that we could have a better capture of the pieces during the movements”, explains Hoppe.
After the updates, RFID inventory processes were implemented, using iTAG tools to perform periodic counts, which also allows for cyclical counts.
