TOSHIBA
UPM Raflatac tags in one of the biggest RFID implementations in Europe
Toshiba Europe GmbH’s Regensburg facility is responsible for the assembly and customer-specific configuration of every Toshiba laptop bound for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Conventional solutions for coping with peaks in demand, like hiring additional staff or building extra storage capacity, weren’t realistic due to their high cost and limited scalability...
RFID was considered to offer the best opportunity to optimize the plant’s supply chain thanks to the automation it offered and the benefit of insights provided by real-time data.
The production at Regensburg receives components, assembles the laptops and applies RFID tags to identify every unit for internal processing. In the beginning, the facility processed and shipped what had been a typical volume of around 10,000 laptops each day. The latest figures tell a different story altogether.
Cost-efficient handling, high read accuracy and four million tags a year
Each corrugated laptop box is now fitted with a paper-faced UPM Raflatac ‘ShortDipole’ tag for pallet reads at a distance of two to three metres. The broadband RFID antenna design enables consistently high levels of performance in all UHF frequency regions worldwide.
Since the start of the project, the daily throughput at the warehouse has risen from 9,500 units a day to 17,300 – that’s an increase of 81%. Pallet handling time has reduced by 75%, and the booking cost per unit has decreased by 40%. The initial RFID read accuracy now stands at an impressive 99.97%.
The Regensburg RFID operation now uses more than four million RFID tags annually, making it one of the largest projects of its kind in Europe. Where there’s demand, we’ve got what it takes to supply!
For more information, please contact your nearest retail RFID representative »