The project stems from research activities started in 2008 at RFID Lab - University of Parma. Since then, members of the Board of Advisors fashion have addressed the different issues concerning the deployment of RFID technologies in the supply chain, and have gained substantial benefits and competitive advantage from the Academic technology transfer. After a thorough business case which pointed out significant ROIs both at logistics and store level, after the positive experience of the RFID fashion store (link), some of these companies decided to enhance their know how from the lab to the field.
RFID Fashion pilot is the first Italian supply chain pilot aimed at assessing the impact of RFID technology in the fashion industry. About 30,000 garments of the spring summer 2010 season will be RFID tagged at the distribution center and followed to a store, enabling real time visibility of logistics flows. Project objectives are twofold: on the one hand the project strives to appraise the benefits of RFID technology on logistics and store processes; on the other one, it is strongly focused at assessing the impact of more accurate and real time data for the supply chain.
RFID Pilot in fashion is innovative and unique for the methodological approach followed.
Major corporations of worldwide fashion brands partner and share benefits and costs of piloting. although only some companies will be directly involved in providing the locations and garments, all participants will be involved in project engineering, both from a technical and from an operational point of view, in the experimental campaigns, and will share the resulting know-how. A pool of technology partners will supply state of the art RFID hardware and software to track the flow of goods in the supply chain and to get value added information out of data warehouses.
It is the first pilot worldwide carried out on a shared basis by a pool of major fashion brands and their supply chain partners. RFID Lab at the University of Parma is in charge for the scientific coordination of the project, partnering with Universities and research centers adhering to the Global RF Lab Alliance (GRFLA).
RFID Pilot in fashion is the required preliminary step for the massive deployment of RFID technologies by fashion best competitors.
Officially started in June 2009, The project encompasses 4 main phases:
Results are expected in middle 2010.
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