Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition--Logility Supports RFID in Updated Suite of Supply Chain Apps

Logility last week rolled out support for radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in its supply chain software, giving users the capability to track goods electronically as they're moved in a warehouse. The new RFID capability was delivered with the warehouse management component of Voyager Solutions 7.0, the newest version of its supply chain planning and execution suite for OS/400, Windows, and Unix servers.

RFID is a promising technology that involves storing data on small, inexpensive tags and then reading that data wirelessly over the radio waves. Compared with barcode technology, which RFID proponents say it will replace, RFID tags can store much more information (up to 32 KB on "active" tags that emit much less on "passive" tags) and can be read with much less effort than barcodes. For these reasons, RFID will likely see its first major rollout in the warehouse, where today tall stacks of merchandise require a dexterous hand, equipped with a barcode scanner.

The burgeoning technology got a big boost this summer when Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company, announced that it would require its top 100 suppliers (many of whom are OS/400 shops) to include RFID tags on all pallets and cases shipped to Wal-Mart starting on January 1, 2005. This, more than anything else, is driving the development and implementation of RFID plans that had been sitting on the back-burner at many manufacturers and suppliers for the last two-and-a-half years, says Karin Bursa, vice president of marketing for Atlanta-based Logility.

Logility now supports RFID tag generation and tracking in the warehouse management component of its Voyager Solutions suite, which is called WarehousePRO. With this release, WarehousePRO supports RFID at the carton-, pallet-, and container-level, and in 2004 the company plans to rollout RFID for the transportation management component of the suite.

Logility is currently implementing an RFID solution with BISSELL, a manufacturer of vacuums and home cleaning supplies. BISSELL sells its products to Wal-Mart, among other retailers, so RFID implementation was a compliance issue. Eventually, BISSELL hopes to get to the point where "smart shelves," or shelves with RFID readers embedded in them, can detect when product displays are low, and send a signal over the Internet to replenishment the item.

Smart shelves could let manufacturers like BISSELL drop the typical replenishment cycle to one to three days, which would have a positive effect on the accuracy and timeliness of supply chain planning activities, Bursa says. "It gets you to a more real-time scenario and gives you greater certainty of your forecast," she says. "It could let companies work off of store-level demand, not distribution center-level demand, which is how a lot of companies do it now."

Overall, Bursa agrees that RFID technology is poised to have a big impact on our commerce, as well as our culture. "I expect it will have huge effect on consumers and retailers," she says. "We're going to see this type of technology embedded in lots of areas of our lives."

In addition to RFID support, Voyager Solutions 7.0 features enhancements in the demand planning component of the suite that should bring greater synchronization between a company's forecasted demand and its capability to meet it. The new graphs and views that ship with Voyager Solutions 7.0 bring this information into a central repository, providing users with drill-down capabilities into raw material sourcing, their geographic distribution of inventory, and other factors that affect their supply chain.

The new release also features new key performance indicators and automatic alerts that are designed to let a company know how it's performing in certain areas of its supply chain. For example, a late shipment would trigger an alert and a manager could then call the company on the receiving end to keep them in the loop. There are about 100 prepackaged alerts built into the new version, and 20 to 25 KPIs, Bursa says.

Since it ported its software to OS/400, in 2001, Logility has found some success with the iSeries, and today OS/400 is the second most popular target platform for Logility's software, surpassing Unix, but is still behind Windows NT. About 420 companies around the world use Logility's software, with companies in Europe and Asia accounting for much of the interest in Logility's OS/400 software, Bursa says.

The British operations of Finland-based packaging manufacturer Huhtamaki is a BPCS shop running Logility's software on iSeries hardware. Huhtamaki is using Logility to optimize its inventories and implement collaborative planning and synchronized manufacturing processes, using the sales and operations planning strategy. Last week, the company presented a seminar with Logility on its sales and operations planning strategy.

Other companies that have implemented Logility on OS/400 servers include Haverty's Furniture Companies, Facet Technologies, a medical devices manufacturer, cabinet manufacturer Mill's Pride, and Williamson-Dickey, which makes the Dickey line of men's work pants.