Staff Jeans, a Greek clothing company that already employs radio frequency identification to track apparel at the item level in its factories and DC, is expanding its use of RFID to include value-added services at the point of sale at the company's biggest store, in Athens. The firm is adding an intelligent-shopping function that works with RFID-enabled in-store video screens, as well as an RFID-based checkout system and an RFID-based product-authentication solution for returns.
The company initially implemented RFID in late 2008 for warehouse management-specifically, to automate receiving, picking and shipping processes at a distribution center in the city of Larissa. After redesigning the system in 2009 and achieving read rates of 99.5 percent, Staff Jeans opted to expand the application in early 2010, and now tags all items it produces. The company has spent the last six months fine-tuning and optimizing the use of mobile readers for its picking and packing processes, as well as optimizing the RFID system for processing the higher volume of tagged goods. Staff Jeans could use 800,000 tags this year.
