Danish businesses are overlooking an obvious and financially attractive logistics and fraud tool.
If possible, I spend my summer vacation in Italy, where we, along with so many other Danes, enjoy the good things in life. One of the family's recurring routines is to visit Decathlon. For those of you who don't know Decathlon, I can tell you that it is a very large chain of sports, leisure and riding equipment. Everything your heart desires, and I'm looking forward to seeing the first Decathlon store in Denmark. The stores are roughly the size of a Dansk Bilka store.

Take a look here: https://www.decathlon.co.uk/sales.html

It's not just the very competitive prices on leisure and fitness equipment that attract me. For me, it's also more professionally nerdy. Decathlon uses RFID technology on a large scale and it's quite impressive!

Almost all products have an RFID tag among all the other tags in the clothing. The RFID tag can also be attached to a water bottle, a ball or a skateboard as a sticker. If you hold an RFID label up to the sun, you can see that inside the tag is a small antenna that can bend and flex together with the washing labels and it is not kept secret as it says RFID on the tag.

RFID technology offers unique opportunities for logistics management and product security, which together are important elements in the fight against fraud, which is yourCompany's primary area of work. RFID technology offers virtually the same possibilities as product security and is even better in certain areas. In logistics management, RFID technology makes annual or quarterly inventory counts look like something out of the Stone Age - ”so last year” one might cheerfully say in the summer heat. The potential is sky-high from the moment the item is produced to its end-of-life if you think it through.

The picture shows an RFID antenna from Decathlon sewn into a clothing brand

Industrial giant Würth Industri is also on board.
Not only Decathlon, but also a large company like Würth Industri, recognizes that RFID can do something special. Würth Industri uses the technology at their customers for automatic reordering, e.g. for high-flow consumer goods. Here, employees simply move an empty plastic box that previously contained, for example, quality bolts or quality nuts, to the top shelf of the rack. The plastic box, which contains an RFID label, communicates via the shelf and the built-in RFID system with Würth Industri and tells about the status of consumption and reorders. No manual actions here. Time-saving and fewer errors when reordering. Could it be used in your company?

Why it's smart.
Back in Decathlon. Every time an item passes through a hole in the table at the checkout, a ”beep” is heard and the item is registered in a purchase. At the same time, the item's security is deactivated, because RFID can do that too1. If you set up scanners in zones in your store, for example between the warehouse and the store, you will also be able to automatically receive information that at 14:22 the item went from the store to the warehouse, or perhaps out of the customer entrance. Useful when you don't understand your shrinkage and are left with questions. At the same time as a sale or movement of an item, the stock is adjusted in quantity and even stock position. The same happens when an item is returned and money is given back to the customer.

For companies that implement RFID, it allows you to use a handheld scanner to do inventory counts as often as you like. Some also talk about the cleaning staff or a self-driving robot being able to do daily counts and thus complete the inventory. No errors or thefts are more than 24 hours old - it's a lot easier to relate to than annual/half-yearly status. It's quite fascinating and the data is accessed live.

When I see what goes on in Decathlon, it's not just the action at the checkout that impresses me - it's everything the system can deliver behind the scenes that I think Danish business doesn't focus on enough. Most companies are fighting for the margins - but the fear of focusing on waste, whether external or internal, malicious or indifferent is, in our opinion, far too great. This is where yourCompany can help your company - so you can focus on your core business. We are happy to take over these more negative tasks (in some people's eyes) and support your organization with things that don't necessarily fit naturally in your current organization and at eye level with everyone.

Logistics management, or ”keeping track of the bits and pieces” as we basically call it, is a big deal in many companies. It's also an area that can be costly not to master. If you don't have control over logistics and goods receipt, you usually have very little control over the rest of the goods” journey through your own chain or business. RFID can also play an important role here. RFID offers ”extreme" traceability. It delivers answers.

Imagine you receive a number of identical items. Normally, you can only count if the quantity is correct. After a while, you can see if the stock count is correct in relation to sales, rejections, etc. Many companies may only take stock once a year and only then do they realize that shrinkage is high. If the shrinkage is as expected, it's already included in the CFO forecast and you don't worry - but honestly, isn't that incredibly poor business acumen? The ambition must be to reduce shrinkage - and preferably all the way down, where it belongs.

With RFID, you can receive your goods and as soon as you have counted that the number is correct, an RFID tag is placed on the identical goods. You have just mounted a small antenna with a unique number. Even if you have, say, 2000 identical items, each one is still unique. Every time the item is moved from warehouse to store, it will be accurately registered because RFID says ”here I am”.

In the future, you can use an RFID handheld scanner to keep a daily status in your store or warehouse and compare it live against expectations for the warehouse - based on yesterday's count minus sales, rejections, etc. When there is a difference between the count and expectations, you are informed live and no errors are more than 24 hours old. This allows for video surveillance or employee memory to be consulted and this focus means that logistics and crime-related shrinkage is reduced to a minimum - or at least the incidents are discovered very quickly and can be dealt with quickly, e.g. reported to the police. YourCompany can also help with this and in many cases we can identify the thief, make contact and get some money back to the company.
In the case of internal theft, we can work with your management team to assess what needs to happen and support the process, for example by discreetly gathering additional information and engaging in a conversation with the individual, which many managers do not feel comfortable with.

RFID is also justified for complaints or returns. I bought a pair of shorts in Decathlon, which I wore a few days later - still with the RFID tag attached. If I wanted to return these shorts, the store can see that these were exactly the shorts I bought a few days earlier. They are unique despite the many identical items on the shelf. This makes a frequently used fraud method more difficult. If you steal a lamp in one store and try to return it to another chain store to get the money in your hand, there will be a problem as this particular lamp has never been sold. If the item comes from a completely different chain, the RFID will not be recognized and thus reveal that the item is not from your chain.

In businesses with control - e.g. gatekeepers - this is also a fantastic tool, as the gatekeeper equipped with a handheld scanner can determine which RFID tags are in the vehicle leaving the store. Gate guards at industrial companies, construction sites, timber trucks, factories, etc. will be able to carry out much more effective control with RFID technology implemented.

But isn't that expensive?
Everything is relative, but RFID should be a profitable investment in your business. Especially compared to the direct and indirect benefits a company receives. An analysis will reveal this. Purchasing a complete system costs approx. 50% more than an article surveillance system, if your company already uses this kind of system, you may know the level for it. The difference is that, as a rule, security usually only protects the store itself against theft, but not the warehouse and outdoor areas - RFID does that. It also doesn't offer inventory management, logistics or any of the other major operational areas, RFID does.

Other costs can be programming against existing IT platforms, financial systems or inventory management, but this is certainly possible for most systems to implement, even if you are running some legacy systems.

RFID will therefore be extremely profitable in many companies.

Staff or supplier assembly.
In many companies, the argument often comes down to the fact that it is time-consuming to install RFID manually. The same is often the challenge when it comes to securing goods. Many good initiatives have failed because of this lukewarm argument. You deftly push the ”monkey” across the table and say ”the supplier must be able to handle it”. Then it's parked, phew.... that was easy.

I think you are running away from your responsibility. For example, who would accept that there was money missing in the cash register at closing time? Most people take this very seriously and no one is allowed to go home until the cash registers are in order

- why does this only apply to contacts? Goods are also value, but it's as if we mentally perceive it differently?

But there is help to be had! Some suppliers are actually prepared to deliver their products with built-in product security and probably also RFID if you ask them nicely - they want to be a good partner for your business.

It's true that fitting all those RFID tags is a manual and somewhat cumbersome process, but that's how it has to be at first and with practice things get easier.
In the future, the desire for vendor-mounted RFID (or for that matter item security) must be mentioned again and again to suppliers, and the first time a supplier experiences being rejected because his competitor could deliver with RFID tags, you might wake up and start listening to your customers.

The benefits of supplier-mounted RFID are that each RFID arrives with a history that extends beyond your company. Your suppliers also benefit from the traceability that RFID can offer. This optimization all the way from production line to end-of-life could lead to more agile and cheaper ways to deliver and transport goods.

How do we get started as a business?

- The first step will be to make a good analysis of how big the need is and thus also get data for the final business case. The work can be done by your finance function, but yourCompany is happy to support the process (2-3 days).

- Create a mini test where you test RFID under the most difficult conditions on your products and processes.

- Set aside money for a pilot test to gain insight into how RFID will work in your organization. This will eliminate the worst teething problems if you decide to implement full scale later.

- Involve your staff to find the most practical solution for your business.

- Send out a feeler to your suppliers about how they can contribute to your change process.

- Make the final decision in the executive board and board of directors and go all in. If all in is too much, plan a one, two or three step implementation. Start small but good and then expand until you are where you need to be.

- Don't do things by halves if you want to fully benefit from RFID on your bottom line.

Sincerely yours

Christian Pejtersen, Owner, yourCompany