Toshiba Europe proves value of RFID at major Regensburg plant

The Regensburg plant, one of the largest in Europe, had suffered from congestion in its warehouses, so implemented the RFID system in order to increase product availability by establishing a more efficient, error-free logistics process at both the warehousing and sales processing levels. The RFID system, which uses Toshiba B-SX4 label printers and UPM Raflatec RFID tags, is coupled to an RFID reader from Tyco ADT Fire & Security, allowing pallets to flow continuously through a single RFID gate – with the entire contents of each pallet scanned and booked in a single movement. Toshiba says the RFID solution has resulted in an increase in the daily average throughput of configured and ready for shipment laptop PCs from 9,500 units per day to 17,300 units per day – an increase of 81/%, with an impressive 99.97% accuracy. This in turn has resulted in a 75% reduction in handling time and a 40% reduction in booking costs per unit. Other savings are becoming apparent as the project progresses, according to the company. “Implementing this solution is showing that RFID can provide tangible benefits for manufacturers in their processes without the need for customer mandates to drive RFID adoption,” says Andreas Unterbusch, Toshiba TEC RFID project manager “Because all the notebooks are individually tagged, future expected requirements from retailers are already in place.”