To solve the age-old problem of keeping track of inventory inside a bustling DC, men's accessories company Randa implemented a distinctly modern solution: RFID.
Diane Rand is Associate Editor and has several years of magazine editing and production experience. She previously worked as a production editor for Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management Review. She joined the editorial staff in 2015. She is responsible for managing digital, editorial, and production projects for DC Velocity and its sister magazine, Supply Chain Quarterly.
How do you keep track of the literally tens of millions of items—belts, neckties, wallets, and the like—flowing through your distribution facilities each year? That was the question faced by Randa Logistics, the fulfillment arm of Illinois-based Randa Accessories, which describes itself as the world's largest men's accessories company.
Like many businesses, Randa Logistics was sometimes challenged with determining precisely where products were located inside its facilities and how much inventory was on hand at any given moment. The problem became particularly acute during peak seasons, as volume and activity ramped up.
The company's fulfillment center in Reno, Nev., is a case in point. During peak periods, the facility often ran short on storage space, forcing forklift drivers to find any available spot on the warehouse floor to store pallets until they could be loaded onto trucks. Trouble was, dropping a pallet outside a defined storage location made it tough to track—a problem that was only magnified when pallets for a specific order were stored in separate locations. On top of that, pallets were sometimes misplaced, resulting in hours of wasted manpower searching for missing pallets in the cavernous, 525,000-square-foot facility.
READY, SET, GO
To help it gain the real-time visibility it needed, the company approached MSM Solutions, a global provider of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and bar-code solutions, back in 2016. For Randa, turning to MSM was a natural choice. The two had worked together before, collaborating on a successful RFID item-level compliance tagging project in 2012.
Zebra FX500 readers with four connected antennas were mounted in pairs to support beams, facing toward the respective shipping lanes, to capture the pallet locations.
In its initial meetings with the supplier, Randa explained that it was now looking to expand its use of RFID to include identifying, tracking, counting, and managing pallet-level shipments headed to retail stores throughout the U.S. In operational terms, what it wanted was a system that would tell it, in real time, where a pallet was staged, so that once a truck arrived to collect a shipment, the orders could be picked quickly and loaded into the trailer.
After conducting a site visit and reviewing Randa's warehouse processes, MSM came up with a solution that would easily integrate into its client's existing business practices. The key components of that system are unique RFID-based pallet identification labels (which Randa is able to generate on demand) and a customized version of MSM's POréalTrack inventory tracking software.
THE RESULTS
With the new system in place, Randa Logistics now has real-time visibility into the current location of any pallet in the fulfillment center. Warehouse associates can log in to any Web-enabled device and see all available pallets for shipping by customer purchase order or retailer ID, with the added functionality to search and sort by other variable data. MSM Solutions also provided a mapping feature that is an exact replica of the sprawling Randa fulfillment center and which will pinpoint any pallet within a zone or show all available pallets within a selected zone.
The end result has been both time and money savings for Randa, along with a boost in operating efficiency. "The real-time visibility and reporting that POréalTrack delivered has allowed us to make better and more timely decisions," said Randy Kennedy, chief logistics officer at Randa Logistics, in a statement. "Knowing exact counts and the exact locations of items in a facility this size has eliminated wasted labor costs searching for items, prevented shipment delays, and helped us avoid chargebacks."
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.