Food Industry RFID: Bruce Foods Leverages RedPrairie Functionality to Achieve ...

From Business Wire (press release), CA ... Bruce Foods, a specialty US food manufacturer, will implement industry-leading RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), Transportation and Warehouse Management ...

About RedPrairie Corporation: RedPrairie is a leader in supply chain technology solutions that help customers transform their businesses. These global, end-to-end logistics solutions optimize operations across customers' extended supply networks, driving out costs, improving customer service and creating competitive advantage. RedPrairie's RFID-enabled suite of supply chain technology solutions provide the industry's leading transportation, productivity, and distribution management capabilities, enhanced with process management and optimization components for real-time visibility, event management, sourcing, quality control, supplier collaboration and performance management. RedPrairie provides industry-tailored solutions for many markets, including consumer goods, direct to consumer and traditional retail, food and beverage, high tech / electronics, third party logistics, industrial / wholesale, automotive and service parts, and pharmaceuticals. Customers include Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Thames Water, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Panasonic, Georgia-Pacific, Eveready, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Unilever, Exel, GE, TNT Logistics, and many others.

" ... RedPrairie RFID strategy addresses the three issues companies are facing today as they plan for inevitable RFID adoption – how to comply with retail 2005 requirements, how to transition from current barcode environments, and how to move to the ultimate scan-free environments that will be possible as RFID technology matures. Compliance: The RFID Accelerator is designed to enable companies to meet the demands of the large retailers without replacing their existing infrastructure. The application provides agents to collect and verify RFID tag information, retrieve related inventory data and pass this combined information to the retailers in advanced shipping notices (ASNs). This will provide the pallet and case RFID-based information that Wal-Mart and Target will require. Transition: Because taking full advantage of RFID technology will entail a fundamental change to distribution operations, companies will need to transition to this stage over a period of time while continuing to leverage their existing investments in RF and barcode infrastructure. To facilitate this dual mode of operation, RedPrairie has integrated RFID functionality with traditional processing so that distribution operations are independent of the data capture source. This will enable customers to take early advantage of RFID benefits, such as increased inventory visibility and accuracy, reduced labor costs and faster cycle times, without disrupting existing operations. Scan-Free: As RFID technology matures, it will enable companies to fundamentally redefine distribution operations. Operations currently requiring manual scanning will be replaced by scan-free operations that query, collect, store and transmit inventory information without human intervention. RedPrairie is working with its customers and the RFID Center of Excellence to define these new operational requirements and build support for them into its application suite. This will have positive impact on warehouse efficiency, labor productivity, transportation turnaround times and retail in-stock levels ... "