Flex CEO Chris Stein interviews Tyler de Leeuw, Quality Control Manager from AMP’D Entertainment, in a fascinating conversation about the company’s groundbreaking journey with RFID technology. RFID is often seen as a magic bullet for solving warehouse issues, but Tyler shares how a thoughtful, incremental implementation has brought real, tangible benefits to their operations.
AMP’D Entertainment began integrating RFID into its workflows about a year ago, initially focusing on tagging the most significant and time consuming quantity of items, cabling. This decision allowed them to streamline their return processes significantly despite the spatial limitations of their warehouse. Tyler emphasizes that the biggest challenge was getting the returns department to trust the new system and adapt to the nuances of the technology. The integration has already led to impressive results-cutting cable return times by up to two-thirds and vastly improving inventory accuracy.
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When discussing RFID with potential users, there is a common sentiment that RFID is this magic technology that will solve a company’s warehouse problems. Your team set realistic expectations and focused on incremental implementation, which is delivering excellent results. What was your implementation timeline?
We started tagging our cables with RFID in June of 2023. It was a major summer project. We brought some staff on specifically for it. We started implementing scanning workflows once we had a good portion of it tagged. We have a pretty small warehouse for our capabilities, which is great because everything’s pretty close by, but also terrible because everything is near other items in the warehouse. So we had to figure out where we would scan and which teams and items we would implement it with first.
Are you talking about the department or personnel? Did you need to make any physical changes or cordon off a warehouse area to enable it to work?
Department specifically. Was this going to be something we wanted on the return or outbound of jobs? Ultimately, we decided that inbound returns were where we would focus because they were less time-sensitive. And we decided to start with cables as our workflow puts them towards the end of the return process.
What did the changes to the workflow look like?
Our returns department is based literally out of one of the loading bays. They have immediate access to the yard. It was that way before we started thinking about RFID. Integrating RFID was pretty simple because they could just step outside and let the scanner go to work without worrying about being so close to the cable racks.
The most significant change was getting the returns department to trust the information from the RFID reads. Through testing the power settings on the scanner itself and showing the returns department a more of the technical aspect of how the scanner works, they now understand how they can get a good scan.
Have you started to extend RFID usage beyond returns?
We’re still focused solely on returns. We’ve run some R&D in the prep process. If we had more space to sequester prep, returns, and storage, we’d be ready to start prepping with RFID today. We just physically don’t have the space.
Beyond the prep side, is there anything else you are thinking about? What comes next after cables?
I think maybe the next thing we would do is fabrics and drapes. It takes a long time to find and scan the barcode, especially when the barcodes are at the bottom or folded inside.
Let’s discuss the benefits. Are you seeing returns on this investment?
I would say it’s probably cutting down our cable return time to maybe a third compared to barcode scanning. It’s saving us hours beyond what we anticipated. We can allocate our turnaround time savings to other tasks. It’s accuracy, with speed.
“…[RFID is] probably cutting down our cable return time to maybe a third compared to barcode scanning. It’s saving us hours beyond what we anticipated. We can allocate our turnaround time savings to other tasks. It’s accuracy, with speed.”
Where else does this effort show up to impact the business?
One area it shows up in our Audit process. It is inevitable that an item will be missed on return whether you use BarCode scans or RFID reads. We send our clients missing reports. If they come back and question a specific unit, we can find that unit’s RFID Identifier and then enter that into a Zebra tool that lets us use the scanner as an RF Geiger Counter. We can go through the warehouse and zone in to find that one unit in the warehouse. It’s increased the speed of these unit audits. Auditing before RFID was a manual process of hand-scanning all units of that model. This is a tremendous time saver.
How does senior management feel about this project?
They are entirely on board. Our team’s been very supportive of getting us what we need. A lot of this has come from the top. Arteen, our owner, is always looking for seconds in time savings on repeated processes to make everything more efficient. He’s loving what’s going on with this.
Okay, last question. If another company came to you and asked if they should do RFID and why? How do you sum it up?
It’s dependent upon the company. If you’re a company coming to me and asking me if you should do RFID and you’re respectively serialized to the extent that we are, I would say, absolutely do it. With the understanding that there will be a learning curve, your savings in the long run will be significant. If it’s a company that is not as serialized as us, I would still say yes, but I would caution them against thinking RFID is a magic pill because there will be an extensive process change outside of the RFID realm.
