From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- Dec. 8, 2015 -
RFID, IoT, and AIDC News: Datalogic Wins 2015 AIM Award for Applying High Speed Grocery Store Bar Code Scanner Portal to Returns Processing
Netherlands 3PL Simon Loos Automates Scanning of Returns from In-Store Displays
SCDigest Editorial Staff
For the past couple of years, SCDigest has reported on the progress of the Datalogic Jade X7 bar code scanning portal designed for us at the point of sale in grocery store applications, as has been demonstrated in recent years at the annual National Retail Federation (NRF) show in New York City each January.
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Datalogic says this approach is currently being considered in similar applications, notably returns processing by eCommerce companies or the etail channels of traditional retailers. |
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In that application, purchased items are unloaded from a shopping cart or basket onto a conveyor belt. The items are whisked through the sort of X-shaped scanner portal at a high rate of speed. The array of imaging scanners can read the item bar codes from a variety of angles, leading to high read rates. Even if the bar code cannot be read, the imager in some cases can actually read the human readable numbers below the bar code and still identify the item. In the case in which neither method delivers a read, the imaging system highlights the item on a display screen so store associates can manually process the item.
How items are handled after scanning depends on what systems integrator is deploying the technology. At the NRF 2015 show last January, one company used a sort of turntable approach that sent items for each customer to a specific lane for bagging.
At last year's show, Datalogic said it has a growing number of tests and pilots for the system, which can process items much faster than manual scanning by an associate. We've also noted that if this technology really catches on, it may delay or even kill any programs to label grocery items with item-level RFID tags for automated checkout processing.
Why? Because the incremental benefit in terms of both speed and accuracy versus this approach might be modest at best. The automated bar code scanning technology also does not require news cost in terms of applying RFID tags to the items during the manufacturing process, which has always been a huge barrier to RFID in the low margin consumer packaged goods business.
With that backdrop, we were semi-surprised to see that the AIM (formerly the Automatic Identification Manufacturers association) case study winner for 2015 went to Datalogic and one of its systems integrators for use of this portal scanner technology for an entirely different application - product returns from promotional displays in retail.
Simon Loos is the warehousing and value added logistics supplier for the largest retailers and CPG manufacturers in the Netherlands. One of the services it performs for those clients is to manage returns from in-store displays. Usually when the promotion is over for a given consumer goods manufacturer at a given retailer, the displays come back from the retailer with inventory still the fixture.
Such returns processing has always been a challenge, and why many manufacturers and retailers use Simon Loos to handle the process.
White traditionally one approach was to build a scan tunnel using an array of traditional fixed bar code scanners, that approach is expensive and may not even handle individual items. So most simply use manual bar code scanning by warehouse associates to track SKU and quantity of what has been returned, a slow and expensive process.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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