CYBRA Corporation

In case you haven't noticed, RFID technology is really taking off. How can I tell? Well, to start with, Avery Dennison, Alien and other tag manufacturers are selling hundreds of millions of RFID tags. Why the boom? Because it works, pure and simple. RFID is much, much faster than bar code for inventory management and other tasks. And that's just the beginning. Two weeks ago I attended RFID in Fashion 2009 at FIT in New York.  This well-run conference by the publishers of RFID Journal featured case study presentations that demonstrated real, measurable Return On Investment for RFID initiatives. Retailers such as American Apparel and Finland's NP Collection have seen real productivity gains, and more important, reduced costs and increased sales.

On Monday,  Bloomingdale's published an item-level RFID study that showed that overall inventory accuracy improved by more than 27 percent, with a corresponding decrease in understock of 21 percent. The overstock figure accounts for the remainder of the adjustment, decreasing by a little more than 6 percent, the report said.

Beyond greater inventory accuracy, the Bloomingdale’s study also quantified how much faster inventory counts were with item-level RFID: 96 percent. The item-level scanning of more than 10,000 items “took two hours, far less than the 53 hours required with barcode scanning. On average, 209 items could be counted per hour via barcode whereas 4,767 items could be counted per hour via RFID.”

Wow! That's real ROI!

Click here for the complete story in Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk.

I just got an assignment to write a story on ROI in RFID for the Sep. 28 issue of MC Press's "iTechnology Manager" newsletter.  As I research this story I guarantee these kinds of numbers will not put me to sleep.

In fact, I'm confident that impressive numbers like these will open many executives eyes.

Stay tuned, I'll post the link when the story runs