Supply chain optimization has become a way of improving and differentiating your business. It’s no longer just a cost of doing business but a source of competitive advantage as demonstrated by companies like WalMart. Bar coding has been widely employed for this purpose but bar codes have limitations and can only help so much:
- You have to be able to see the barcodes to read them.
- Bar codes can’t store actionable data about the condition of the contents such as it’s temperature or transport history.
The critical benefits of actionable data about the condition and location of products are being increasingly recognized across the food and pharmaceutical industries, as well as for asset tracking. Actionable data enables the intelligent supply chain and delivers the ability to improve operational efficiencies and drive out waste. Research indicates that this data is best captured at the pallet, bin or tote level – the domain of the reusable transport item, or RTI.
An intelligent RTI, or iRTI, is a reusable transport item that is embedded with an RFID tag to collect and capture information about the RTI itself as well as its contents. When integrated into a software system, the iRTI provides important actionable data to help address some of the key challenges in today’s supply chains and provide a rapid ROI. And, by employing RFID, you don’t have to actually see the tag to read it and capture the information on the tag. This simplifies operations and can reduce labor costs.
Download the Packaging Revolution iRTI White Paper
Rick LeBlanc, editor of Packaging Revolution’s authored this new white paper on the value of Intelligent RTIs. It’s a great explanation of the benefits of this new solution. You can download it here.
Kevin Payne
Senior Director of Marketing
intelleflex 