Sun launches RFID toolkit for manufacturers
specifically address the business challenges of the packaged goods
industry and help firms fully leverage the power of RFID, writes
Anthony Fletcher.
The company's RFID Industry Solution Architecture (ISA) for Manufacturing simplifies and accelerates the process of designing and integrating an RFID solution. Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are increasingly looking beyond immediate RFID mandate compliance deadlines, such as those from Wal-Mart and Metro and are looking at integrating RFID into their business processes to increase efficiencies, reduce costs and accelerate business decisions.
The RFID ISA for Manufacturing provides the essential guidelines to help these customers deploy RFID to improve warehouse management and automate advance shipment notification processes.
"Customers are continuing to look at how to achieve business benefits from RFID and how they can apply RFID to specific scenarios within their industry verticals," said Stephen Murphy, vice president of industry sales for manufacturing, Sun Microsystems.
"While there are various players in the market who are claiming RFID expertise, with the RFID Industry Solution Architectures Sun has brought together our proven RFID and vertical industry experience to create unique, targeted solutions to address these challenges."
Indeed, corporate integration is increasingly being seen as a key means by which companies can achieve maximum profit. But while many companies have grown from small local enterprises to become global leaders in their industries, a recent study found that more than 80 per cent of them fail to capture the full returns of their global investments.
These findings, which are contained in a report carried out by Deloitte Research for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT), suggest that rather than taking a holistic, global view of their businesses, most global manufacturers focus on addressing the individual pieces of their far-flung global network - the complex web of suppliers, production facilities, distribution centres and customers - that comprise their supply chain.
The RFID ISA for Manufacturing is designed to help firms focus on every aspect of their operations by providing detailed guidelines to help manufacturers build an end-to-end RFID solution. The firm claims that it contains everything a consumer packaged goods manufacturer needs to deploy RFID for warehouse management and automating the advanced shipment notification process: Sun Java(TM) System RFID Software, Provia Software's ViaWare Warehouse Management System, a Printronix RFID printer, an RFID reader, and integration middleware.
Warehouse Management Systems are a critical component in an end-to-end RFID solution as they are among the last 'systems of record' in the supply chain.
"For consumer packaged goods manufacturers, the ability to have RFID as part of a WMS solution allows for the RFID data to be fully utilised throughout the supply chain," said Paul Crist, Provia vice president of sales and marketing. "Our relationship with Sun, combined with our efforts together at several common customers offers consumer packaged goods companies a powerful solution for RFID throughout a supply chain."
All the technology components of the RFID ISA for Manufacturing are standards-based to help ensure compatibility and eliminate the risk of vendor dependency. In addition, the components have standard interfaces, which provide customers the flexibility of swapping or adding other standards-based components.
Sun claims that a subset of the technology components in the RFID ISA for Manufacturing can address immediate RFID compliance deadlines and also establish a foundation to help customers achieve longer term business benefits. The RFID ISA for Manufacturing also supports integration with other enterprise software, such as ERP and SCM systems.
Sun's RFID Industry Solution Architectures (ISAs) are designed to meet the unique RFID requirements of several vertical markets including manufacturing, pharmaceutical and retail. The RFID ISAs build on the foundation provided by the Sun RFID Reference Architecture, which provides a designed, tested, tuned, and documented proof-of-concept deployment architecture.
The RFID ISAs leverage the expertise Sun has gained from working on customer deployments, to create industry-specific RFID solutions.
