From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- June 2, 2015 -
RFID and AIDC News: Auburn Cuts Ribbon on New RFID Lab Moved there in Spirit Last Year from University of Arkansas
Amazon Commits to RFID Research at Grand Opening
SCDigest Editorial Staff
Auburn University acquired the RFID Lab from the University of Arkansas for draft pick and textbooks to be named later.
Ok, it wasn't quite like that, but it was a bit of an unusual scenario, as the former RFID Lab in Little Rock, well known in retail RFID circles, was transferred to Auburn in 2014, leading to the opening of a brand new research facility two weeks ago.
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Amazon announced it will be working with the lab on research to determine how to best tag items as they enter the DC, and potential use cases.
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The link? Dr. Bill Hardgrave, who first got the lab off the ground at Arkansas in 2005, but left there to take the job of dean of the business school at Auburn in 2010.
The new 13,000 square-foot facility will operate in a former grocery store location, and will be able to replicate conditions in traditional retail, grocery and convenience store spaces, as well as warehouse and distribution center environments.
When housed at the University of Arkansas, the Lab benefitted from a strong relationship with nearby Walmart's headquarters, which launched its famous RFID compliance program in 2003. That program eventually went bust, replaced later with a less ambitious item-level tagging program rather than the carton-focused initiative that it initially pursued.
The Lab did some experiments early on in the Walmart program that attempted to quantify the sales lift from better in-stock positions at Walmart stores supplied with RFID-tagged cases. It later did research work with a number of retail chains such as Dillard's and JC Penney that quantified the inventory accuracy and labor benefits from moving to RFID-tagged apparel items versus traditional bar code tracking. Cycle counts at retail, for example, can be taken in just seconds using handheld RFID readers at super high levels of accuracy, versus much more time required to scan item bar codes, and with much less reliable accuracy due to human error.
Hardgrave, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, often pointed out the very low levels perpetual inventory systems at most retailers, generally well below what store executives believed, and how those accuracy levels could be improved significantly through RFID technology.
The reason for the move from Arkansas to Auburn weren't detailed at the time in 2014, but it certainly could relate to research work drying up in Little Rock after Hardgrave's departure. The publicly available research, now moved to the Auburn lab's web site, shows the last research paper from the Lab at Arkansas was published in January of 2012.
Despite the transfer, Auburn said last year that it will continue to collaborate with University of Arkansas' Sam M. Walton College of Business Department of Supply Chain Management and the Center for Advanced Spatial Technology.
The Auburn lab will also continue the prior lab's RFID "tagged item certification program" to assist retailers and manufacturers in qualifying specific tag-reader combinations for specific product types.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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Hardgrave said the move of the Lab last year is already paying off for Auburn before the opening of the new facility.