Newswise: A new study on the use of radio-frequency identification tags on individual retail items shows that inventory accuracy decreases or diminishes over time with conventional systems that rely on barcodes and/or human counting to track inventory. The research, conducted by the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, also demonstrated that the use of an RFID-enabled system could improve inventory accuracy by more than 27 percent over a 13-week period. “This project was part of a larger research effort to demonstrate and quantify the business value of RFID item-level tagging for day-to-day operations in a retail environment,” said Bill Hardgrave, director of the research center and professor of information systems in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. “The results can guide companies as they investigate whether, and to what extent, to implement RFID. The findings provide insight on how RFID can help retailers increase efficiency and thus significantly reduce expenses, which is always important but even more so in this tight economy.” The investigation included two Bloomingdale’s stores – a test store with an automated, RFID-enabled system and a control store with Bloomingdale’s inventory-management system – in a major northeastern metropolitan area. The 13-week project focused on two departments – men’s denim jeans and women’s denim jeans. To establish baseline information, physical inventory counts were taken three times per week for the first five weeks by workers using both RFID and barcode readers. For the remaining eight weeks, physical counts by workers using both types of readers were conducted two times per week.

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Categories: Asset Tracking, News, Retail Tags:RFID, RTLS