BY JAMES A. COOKE, EDITOR AT LARGE
RFID REPORT
specialreport
ALTHOUGH ITEM-LEVEL TAGGING OF GOODS HAS
long been touted as the future of inventory visibility, a lot of
companies are skittish about being pioneers. That’s not the
case with two German concerns. German contract logistics
service provider The Fiege Group is helping German fashion retailer Gerry Weber International AG become the
industry leader in the deployment of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology for tracking individual goods.
“Gerry Weber is the only company that has rolled out
RFID tags across its stores and supply chain,” says
Christoph Mangelmans, the Fiege distribution center manager involved in the RFID initiative.
Gerry Weber, which claims that it is now tagging nearly
100 percent of its garments, initially adopted RFID to speed
up the goods-in and goods-out processes at its stores and
enable it to use electronic article surveillance (EAS) to deter
theft. “RFID item-level tagging gives various advantages
along the supply chain, starting with easy DC ‘goods-in’
operations that are 100-percent quality checked,” says Gerry
Weber’s former chief information officer, Christian von
Grone. “This has sped up our processes and saves money on
EAS and error handling, and gives the chance for higher
turnover on replenishable items.”
26 MILLION ITEMS TAGGED
Headquartered in Halle, Germany, Gerry Weber sells its
clothing line through its own stores as well as through dealers. It launched its RFID tagging program in 2009. On its
website, the company claims that since January 2011, it has
outfitted more than 26 million of its clothing items with
RFID.
Gerry Weber has partnered with Fiege since the inception
of the tagging program. Based in Greven, Germany, Fiege
provides contract logistics services in Europe for a number
of industries, managing such activities as warehousing,
transportation, e-commerce fulfillment, order management, and reverse logistics on behalf of its clients. Fiege currently handles the distribution of Gerry Weber’s “Edition”
and “Taifun” clothing brands. A second contract logistics
firm, Meyer & Meyer, handles goods on hangers.
www.dcvelocity.com DECEMBER 2013 DC VELOCITY 45
Item-level tagging has sped up inbound and outbound processing at a
German 3PL’s distribution center. But issues remain in using RFID for item selection.
Pioneering RFID in the DC
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