Taming the Beast
At this point, very few small to mid-sized business can claim that they have been hand picked by Wal-Mart to participate in its RFID mandate. But this is exactly the case for Pet Friendly, which was singled out by the retail giant and is now one of the first minority-owned businesses in the state of Alabama to RFID-enable its business processes. "Wal-Mart requested we participate in the RFID program for two reasons. One is our size. We're a small company that has 85 percent of our business supplying Wal-Mart," says Charles Weinacker, COO for Pet Friendly. "Second is our performance. In the 14 years we've been a Wal-Mart supplier we've never missed a ship date. "
Promoting Corporate Health
Since 1992, Pet Friendly has been creating, developing and distributing pet products which are natural, colorful and contribute to better pet health, awareness and knowledge. The company is uncompromisingly committed to quality -- in raw materials, in design, in workmanship and in the end product. It was this uncompromised commitment that called for the company to take on RFID technology in an effort to maintain its flawless customer satisfaction record.
According to Pet Friendly, any technology that allows the company to streamline the manufacturing, shipping and order fulfillment processes, critical to its industry, is worth the investment necessary for implementation. RFID can provide Pet Friendly with the tools to leverage more accurate accountability in the supply chain, better management of in-store inventory and better demand planning.
Best in Show
Pet Friendly teamed up with IDVelocity, an RFID infrastructure and process management software provider, to tame the Wal-Mart RFID mandate. IDVelocity's ComplianceNow accelerator -- chosen by Pet Friendly -- is built with IDVelocity ADC, an RFID/Auto-ID platform. This platform provides rapid development of RFID/Auto-ID solutions by graphically designing the required business processes. In addition, IDVelocity works with its many hardware and system integration partners to bundle the appropriate software, hardware and services in a wide range of options to help companies and organizations, like Pet Friendly, to quickly achieve RFID compliance.
IDVelocity's ComplianceNow software solution enabled Pet Friendly to immediately meet the Wal-Mart's requirements. As a result, Pet Friendly now ships RFID tagged products to six distribution centers. Pet Friendly is also able to add shipping sites on a graduated schedule as Wal-Mart requirements change, leaving Pet Friendly with a strategy for making RFID-enabled processes a business revolution, not just an increased cost for being a supplier to Wal-Mart.
"We're a company with an eye towards tomorrow's economy," says Weinacker. "We've started looking at how we can streamline incoming inventory from our suppliers using RFID. The IDVelocity solution is a key part of our growth using cost-saving processes."
With RFID-enabled operations, Pet Friendly can know when a customer is short on its product inventory, sometimes even before they do. This allows the company to manufacture and ship additional inventory ahead of demand.
But perhaps the biggest benefit for Pet Friendly so far is that with RFID tags now on its products, it can capture and record every stage and event in a product's movement throughout its supply chain.
A Monster Project
Monster Cable Products, the manufacturer of high-performance a/v cables and power products, also opted to implement IDVelocity's ComplianceNow Accelerator Solution to meet the RFID mandate of Best Buy. The consumer electronics retail chain required its major suppliers to begin applying EPC-compliant tags to product cases and pallets by January 2, 2006, with all cases and pallets from all suppliers tagged by May 2007.
"It is very difficult to envision and design the best processes, especially with a technology that you're unfamiliar with, the very first time that you attempt it," says Kevin Cornish, IT Director for Monster Cable.
As it did for Pet Friendly, the ComplianceNow accelerator provides Monster Cable with a pre-built application template that can be easily tailored and integrated into the company's existing infrastructures and applications. Monster Cable was able to make several changes to its original-use case designs while the IDVelocity implementation team was on site. In most cases, the business process flow change requested was a "while-you-watch" event.
"The product was quickly tailored to our facility, equipment and shipping procedures," explains Cornish. Integration with its PeopleSoft ERP system was also achieved. Monster Cable is confident that the flexibility of the ComplianceNow solution will be a critical point of competitive advantage as Best Buy and its other major retailer partners will most likely alter their mandates over time.
Chain Reaction
Monster Cable's RFID project inspired its third party logistics provider, Hopkins Distribution Company, to also implement ComplianceNow to meet Best Buy's mandate.
"We had no experience with RFID before this project and IDVelocity worked with us to build a robust solution that met our needs for today and for the future," says Robert Hopkins, president and CEO, Hopkins Distribution Company.
The distribution company's processes required a few tweaks from the standard ComplianceNow Accelerator, which IDVelocity made in the graphical design tool while Hopkins employees watched. In less than one week, IDVelocity's ComplianceNow was implemented and in use by Hopkins personnel. "Our goal is to ensure our customers meet their RFID compliance mandates," says Hopkins. "This is the first of many customers who we will perform this service for."