Profiles in Supply Chain Enablement: A seafood supplier takes on RFID to meet mandates and improve operations.
Company: Beaver Street Fisheries (Jacksonville, FL)
Company Size: Small
Company Sector: Food
Area(s) of Enablement: Supply Chain Integration & Infrastructure (RFID)
Enabler: GlobeRanger (Richardson, TX)
Case Study: The Challenge
Beaver Street Fisheries wanted to start integrating RFID technology into its systems and business processes to improve operational efficiencies and to comply with Wal-Mart mandates.
Based in Jacksonville, Fla., Beaver Street Fisheries carries the largest, most diversified seafood inventory in the Southeast. The company prides itself on its ability to service its customers with a broad selection of products while maintaining a tight control on expenses and passing savings on to its client base.
The Solution
Beaver Street Fisheries set up an RFID lab and conducted several pilots to test label options before incorporating RFID into existing business processes. After testing was completed, the implementation phase included setting up compliance stations where RFID labels are encoded with a Zebra R110 smart label printer/encoder and applied to cases of tilapia, crab, lobster and other frozen fish products. Tagged cases are then validated through an RFID portal. In all, the implementation took less than 10 weeks.
Beaver Street Fisheries leveraged Franwell's rfid>Genesis software to integrate the label printing/encoding operations with Beaver Street's warehouse management system. Franwell's rfid>Genesis product is built on GlobeRanger's Edgeware platform.
For labeling the products destined for Wal-Mart, The Danby Group and Franwell developed a cart-mounted smart labeling solution for printing 4-by-6 inch labels that can be easily moved around the warehouse. In order to validate each order before shipping to Wal-Mart, Franwell developed an order confirmation application to compare the read data from the RFID Portal with the customer's order.
ROI
In November 2004 Beaver Street Fisheries began shipping RFID tagged products to Wal-Mart. Although these products only represent about 5 percent of the SKUs that Beaver Street ships to Wal-Mart, the company remains proactive in deploying RFID technology. In a recent Wal-Mart press release, Beaver Street Fisheries was recognized by Wal-Mart for providing a "textbook example" of how to approach RFID technology.
Next Steps
In the near future, BeaverStreet Fisheries plans to leverage RFID to track cases and pallets at the company's seafood processing and packing plants for improved inventory management. Beaver Street Fisheries' long-term RFID vision is to involve its network of suppliers to apply RFID labels at the source and leverage information on the RFID tags to meet legal data requirements such as method of catch, catch weight, country of origin and date codes.
For more stories of successful supply chain implementations, read the "2005 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100" article in the June/July 2005 issue of the magazine. Also watch the Today's Headlines section of SDCExec.com every Tuesday and Thursday for more in depth best practices drawn from this year's Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100.
Company: Beaver Street Fisheries (Jacksonville, FL)
Company Size: Small
Company Sector: Food
Area(s) of Enablement: Supply Chain Integration & Infrastructure (RFID)
Enabler: GlobeRanger (Richardson, TX)
Case Study: The ChallengeBeaver Street Fisheries wanted to start integrating RFID technology into its systems and business processes to improve operational efficiencies and to comply with Wal-Mart mandates.
Based in Jacksonville, Fla., Beaver Street Fisheries carries the largest, most diversified seafood inventory in the Southeast. The company prides itself on its ability to service its customers with a broad selection of products while maintaining a tight control on expenses and passing savings on to its client base.
The Solution
Beaver Street Fisheries set up an RFID lab and conducted several pilots to test label options before incorporating RFID into existing business processes. After testing was completed, the implementation phase included setting up compliance stations where RFID labels are encoded with a Zebra R110 smart label printer/encoder and applied to cases of tilapia, crab, lobster and other frozen fish products. Tagged cases are then validated through an RFID portal. In all, the implementation took less than 10 weeks.
Beaver Street Fisheries leveraged Franwell's rfid>Genesis software to integrate the label printing/encoding operations with Beaver Street's warehouse management system. Franwell's rfid>Genesis product is built on GlobeRanger's Edgeware platform.
For labeling the products destined for Wal-Mart, The Danby Group and Franwell developed a cart-mounted smart labeling solution for printing 4-by-6 inch labels that can be easily moved around the warehouse. In order to validate each order before shipping to Wal-Mart, Franwell developed an order confirmation application to compare the read data from the RFID Portal with the customer's order.
ROI
In November 2004 Beaver Street Fisheries began shipping RFID tagged products to Wal-Mart. Although these products only represent about 5 percent of the SKUs that Beaver Street ships to Wal-Mart, the company remains proactive in deploying RFID technology. In a recent Wal-Mart press release, Beaver Street Fisheries was recognized by Wal-Mart for providing a "textbook example" of how to approach RFID technology.
Next Steps
In the near future, BeaverStreet Fisheries plans to leverage RFID to track cases and pallets at the company's seafood processing and packing plants for improved inventory management. Beaver Street Fisheries' long-term RFID vision is to involve its network of suppliers to apply RFID labels at the source and leverage information on the RFID tags to meet legal data requirements such as method of catch, catch weight, country of origin and date codes.
For more stories of successful supply chain implementations, read the "2005 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100" article in the June/July 2005 issue of the magazine. Also watch the Today's Headlines section of SDCExec.com every Tuesday and Thursday for more in depth best practices drawn from this year's Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100.
