UPM Raflatac Recognized for RFID project

Finnish apparel company NP Collection has won the Golden Tag Award 2009 for effective logistics and profitable trade using RFID. UPM Raflatac is the winner of the Minitag Award for the same project.

The annual Golden Tag Award goes to an RFID project providing a high Return-on-Investment. The award is presented each year to the organization commissioning the RFID solution, while the Minitag Award is given to the winning project’s RFID consultant.

The two awards, presented in Kista, Stockholm, are the result of cooperation between RFID Nordic, an association for the companies in the RFID field, and the Swedish trade paper Packmarknaden.

NP Collection opened one of the most advanced intelligent clothes stores in Hollola, Finland last year. Customers at the store can try on clothes in intelligent changing rooms that use RFID technology. Wall-mounted touch screens allow customers to browse additional product information, view suggestions for matching clothes and accessories and have alternative products or sizes brought straight to the changing room. NP Collection also uses a check-out system with RFID reading capabilities to speed up customer service.

RFID tags are attached to all NP Collection products during manufacture, and data from the tags is read at several points along the way to the central warehouse. The capacity to follow the stream of goods in real time provides substantial cost reductions in logistics and manufacture. On the store level this data can be exploited to plan shelf use in advance, for example. The RFID tags can also provide anti-theft functionality.

The supply of these solutions involves cooperation between several parties, including UPM Raflatac, RDN, SML, Impinj, Microsoft, IBM and Digia.