Tibbett & Britten has signed a four-way partnership agreement with IconNicholson,
Raymond Corporation and the Econorack Group of Companies, to conduct an assessment
of RFID and to design and build a "living" lab at its Connect Logistics
distribution warehouse in Edmonton, Alberta.
IconNicholson is a technology professional services company; Pacific Westeel
Racking is a provider of warehouse storage systems; Raymond Corporation is
a provider of Raymond® materials handling solutions.
T&B group member, Connect Logistics, is the 3PL provider for the Alberta
Gaming & Liquor Commission, and was selected as the best site for the
RFID research because liquor handling is notoriously challenging due to the
wide range of technologies and systems used and complications associated with
liquids and metallic packaging.
"We felt it was important to assess and test RFID in a real working
warehouse environment complete with the noise, commotion and urgency of business.
These test results will provide key learnings that are true-to-life rather
than in some clinical trial," says Jim Hyslop, VP Research & Development
for T&B.
The intention is to make the Connect DC RFID-ready by appropriately configuring
a small portion of it with RFID hardware, tags and software. The optimisation
process will include equipping and testing one of each type of Raymond lift
truck, pallet and carton storage locations, and dock door used in the entire
DC operation.
RFID will be integrated into the regular operation that handles liquor, wine
and imported beer distribution for the province of Alberta and will be subjected
to all of the normal operation factors in a working DC.
The RFID tests will confirm the benefits associated with applying RFID to
various DC activities and will help T&B demonstrate to customers how RFID
can be best applied in a DC operation for optimal efficiency. T&B will
also offer their customers the chance to test their products in the Connect
"living" lab to determine optimal tagging and palletising configurations
and train their staff on RFID.
Hyslop states: "We felt that if RFID can perform in the liquor business,
then it will work in any one of our sectors. Over time we plan to translate
our expertise into our other sectors - grocery, mass merchandise, clothing
- particularly where the demand for RFID services is growing and the technology
can be implemented more vigorously."
The lab will be fully operational by May 2004, and will comply with the major
USA retailer directives for carton and pallet tagging requirements (passive
UHF tags class 0,1 and protocols).
