RFID Integration Enables Manufacturer to Meet Retailer’s Mandate | Retail

11/12/2024

RRD’s tech expertise comes to the fore in producing RFID-enabled insert cards and cartons, ensuring products are ready for placement on retail shelves

CHALLENGE

A global manufacturer of home, hardware, and automotive products was required by a national retailer to attach RFID labels to all products shipped to the retailer’s stores and warehouses. The new mandate was part of an expansion of its RFID tagging program, adding several merchandise categories to provide faster inventory counting and ordering, real-time inventory tracking, and other benefits. The mandate means that products without RFID labels are restricted from in-store distribution.

As a result of the new requirement, the manufacturer sought to source new folding cartons with affixed RFID tags, as well as RFID labels for existing packaging insert cards that accompanied their products. The two projects comprised multiple SKUs on the company’s roster of tool accessories.

SOLUTION

Recognizing how critical RFID-related expertise and capabilities would be to the success of this new initiative, the manufacturer turned to RRD’s Labels experts. A long-time partner, RRD worked closely with the company to understand the full scope of the project and determine what would be necessary to meet the retailer’s requirements. 

Specifications for the RFID labels were a particular focus for RRD’s project team. In sourcing the labels, they had to take into consideration the size constraints of the existing packaging insert cards. In addition, they studied the retailer’s specs to learn what type of RFID inlay would be approved for use on the manufacturer’s product.

For the insert cards, the team decided to run a preliminary trial of the RFID labels. After the manufacturer provided specific information to be encoded, RRD then ran a test of the labels in a “live” field environment. The labels were attached to various skids, scanned, and the results evaluated, ensuring that they would read properly on the customer side. Following the successful test, they proceeded to move into live production and the labels were affixed to the insert cards according to the mandated specs. 

Production of the shipping cartons followed a parallel process, although these were entirely new project components. As with the insert cards, the project team sourced the RFID labels, properly encoded the inlays, had them approved by the manufacturer, and affixed them as per retailer and customer specifications. 

RESULTS

By working with RRD to design and produce cartons with attached RFID tags and labels for their packaging insert cards, the manufacturer ensured their products were ready for distribution at the retailer’s stores across the country. The RFID technology allows for fast, accurate inventory counting while also offering real-time inventory tracking, security, loss prevention, and other benefits

Specific project results included:

• Producing RFID labels for folding cartons for manufacturer’s tools sold in retail stores
• Producing RFID labels for packaging insert cards
• All labels were properly encoded and placed on their respective parts according to retailer and manufacturer specifications