Lexar Media RFID best practices

Along with key vendor representatives for the implementation, Lee Mar, Lexar Media's senior logistics analyst and RFID project lead, discussed the company’s RFID program in a late March Webinar. In it he also passed along some advice.

That story, "Lexar leverages RFID," is told in the upcoming May issue of Packaging World. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough space for the best practices advice from the participants in that article, but this article should rectify that for those interested in reading more about what they learned.

Background:
Lexar Media, Fremont, CA, which has been involved in RFID for the past three years, is a supplier of flash products to retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and OfficeMax, Lexar produces more than 200 different stockkeeping units and 30,000 monthly shipments, 4,000 of which are sent to Wal-Mart. Products are shipped as individual cases or as pallet loads.

“We wanted to work our way up as experience was gained and as technology was improved,” says Mar. The company has gone from using 200,000 RFID tags a year to currently using more than 1 million RFID tags/yr today. The implementation is at the company's third-party logistics provider.

In 2007, as part of its scale-up strategy, Lexar began Phase 3 of its RFID implementation using portable RFID readers. The compact units have been initially deployed onto forklift trucks as mobile readers. The forklift reader interrogates a pallet and verifies that it is associated with a particular order.

"We were able to automated and expand the verification process to ensure that forklift operators are not only selecting the right pallet, but also placing that pallet on the right truck," said Mar. "This marriage of RFID with mobility enabled us to easily move our RFID readers as needed, all with our existing infrastructure."

Mar shared one key bit of advice. "Choose your vendors wisely, ones that can grow as you learn, and are flexible enough to help optimize your process as you come to learn what RFID can do for you," he said. Lexar found that through its RFID software solution vendor, KeyTone Technologies, and Motorola, which provides its mobile readers for flexibility. Motorola's RD5000 readers permit wireless communication via integrated 802.11a/b/g WLAN radio and Bluetooth communication.

This solution also enables Lexar to scale up and down to meet fluctuating seasonal demands.

Suppliers' insights

Edwin Winder, executive vice president of KeyTone Technologies, offered the following advice based on his experience:
* Choose a software platform that is flexible
* Choose a solution that adapts to your processes
* Employ a solution that complements your existing applications
* Select a solution that is low maintenance
* Ensure that the physics, process, and systems work in concert

"Implementing is not the answer," said Winder. "Implementing RFID successfully and then using it in order to change as you go forward is the best practice."

Joe White, Motorola's vice president of RFID business development and marketing, shared a number of trends he's seeing unfold in RFID applications in 2008. These include applications that are focusing on entry and exit "choke" points, as Lexar did by bringing visibility to its dock doors via the mobile RFID readers.

While White is a proponent of mobile RFID, he is not promoting elimination of fixed read points.

"[Supplement those] with mobile touch points throughout the operation to enhance visibility," he said. "Mobile RFID can play a role in the warehouse environment all the way from pallet jacks to shrink-wrap equipment," and to outbound shipments loading at dock doors as at Lexar.

Motorola's read on RFID trends

For those who follow RFID closely, it's worth sharing some of the trends White also noted:
* Continued healthy, steady growth in RFID implementations. "It’s not the explosion around the supply chain, but 20-percent yearly growth," said White. "That compares to other data-capture technology growth that is around six percent"
* Customer mindsets are changing from "How does Gen 2 technology work?” to "How are we going to deploy, and how are we going to scale within our installations?"
* Companies looking at supply-chain visibility are now looking at product traceability, especially around retail perishables and pharmaceuticals. "Inherent characteristics of that [pharma] market makes it particularly beneficial to get that visibility. Time-to-market is a differentiator of how good a product you are selling in the marketplace and how long that product lasts when it reaches the customer, in order to deliver to the customer the best product," said White.
* Customers are looking beyond UHF RFID and are integrating their RFID with their overall RF strategy, with technologies such as near-field communications and Wi-Fi.
* Awareness around mandates has created a lot of activity within four walls, and companies are shifting from open to closed-loop implementations where customers could easily identify the payback and deploy successfully.
* Lastly, White noted to expect Motorola to introduce a suite of different form factor products over the next year, in applications where its customers are seeing the biggest benefits today.