Using RFID to tag and track Consumer Goods through the supply chain creates benefits for the manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and retailers involved and has particularly significant opportunities for ROI for enterprises that are vertically integrated brand managers. For brand owners, proactive item level tracking of fast moving, high value goods through forward and reverse supply chains helps to improve processes and protect the brand. Some of the processes involved include:

• Suppliers tag goods before sending them to the Retailers.
• Suppliers verifying orders and shipments before sending to customers
• Suppliers provide advance notice (ASN) of goods in transit.
• Retailers provide suppliers with visibility to goods flow through their Supply Chain all the way to selling floor and even POS (and back)
• Supply Chain partners collaborate to improve inventory utilization and maximize sales

There are many opportunities for ROI involving Consumer Goods:

• Proof of Shipment
• Accurate Orders & Shipments (qty, mix, dest)
• Smart Recall
• Warranty Validation
• Shrinkage Management
• Quality Control
• Brand / Channel Protection
• Inventory Flow Visibility
• Automated Shipping & Receiving
• Merchandising & Promotion monitoring.
• Out of Stock Management
• Replenishment Automation
• Store Optimization

An RFID Infrastructure for Consumer Goods manufacturing and distribution - The use of RFID in consumer goods supply chains creates many requirements for an expandable, sustainable infrastructure. The RFID technology choices must work for closed-loop, open-loop and cross-enterprise data collection and exchange involving many processes and potentially many companies. These processes incorporate both fixed/portal type readers and handheld/mobile readers to facilitate tag data capture at many locations. And, most companies envision incremental use of RFID over time as they expand the number of tracking locations, deployed readers and consuming applications across their enterprises. The Reva Systems Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) delivers the scalable infrastructure platform that enterprises can depend on to generate value now and in the future.

The Reva TAP supports most major reader brands and models with simple point-and-click configuration. The Reva solution provides a graphical user interface that allows implementers to define physical facility layouts, place fixed readers, indicate benchmark reference tags for coordinating and dynamically determining mobile reader locations, create business location representations and once deployed - remotely manage and monitor facility level RFID networks. Configuration tasks can also be automated to facilitate rapid rollouts for deployments that incorporate 100's of facilities.