Case Studies

Grupo Disber: Christmas Hampers with RFID Technology

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In Spain, the Christmas hamper (cesta de navidad) is the most popular and most widely-given gift, particularly among businesses. And Grupo Disber is Spain’s leading company in the production, sale and distribution of this product, offering a wide range of hamper options. It is also very much a seasonal business focused on the last few months of the year, where speed in meeting the demands of the market, tracking the product and the reliability of the operations are crucial. In record time, Tag Ingenieros Consultores and Intermec have developed a tracking solution based on RFID technology which has increased operational efficiency, enhanced productivity, and has reduced product handling and distribution errors to virtually zero.

The objective of the RFID project at Grupo Disber was full, automated, error-free tracking of these Christmas packages from the production stage through to dispatch, including monitoring refunds. It covered picking, palletization, pallet shrinkwrapping, transferring the pallets between warehouses and their temporary storage and dispatch to distributors and customers. Grupo Disber’s focus on innovation meant they were seeking a state-ofthe- art technology solution based on RFID technology. They used engineering company TAG Ingenieros Consultores, S.L., which carried out the project’s analysis, design, planning and execution with the help and support of Intermec, which provided all the RFID equipment needed to identify and track the Christmas packages and boxes.

The Challenge

According to Vicente Arastey, assistant manager at Grupo Disber, “The company’s needs were to locate and identify the boxes and packages at its various storage warehouses. The sheer number of the pallets produced – up to 1,000 per day – led on numerous occasions to losses of goods in the storage areas, with the consequent associated cost. Additionally, there was no way of tracking the boxes and packages, so it was not possible to identify which had been dispatched to each customer. The solution to this was RFID. A comprehensive analysis of the company by our supplier, Tag Ingenieros, found that this technology was the only solution which could drastically reduce or eliminate all the customer service problems we were having, thanks to the visibility and automation it introduced”.

The project began by identifying each of the Christmas packages and boxes the company wanted to track throughout all of the company’s processes. By adding an RFID tag to the box or package’s quality guarantee stamp, each product can be monitored across all the different warehouses and during dispatch to the distributors and customers.

According to Arastey, “RFID technology enables us to identify multiple items at the same time, remotely, and without needing to view them directly. This was key for automating the validation and identification processes in the scanning areas. We had previously been working with the bar code, but the need for per-unit, manual scanning increased the time spent on validating the pallets, transferring them between warehouses, dispatching them etc., not to mention the errors we used to encounter during the identification process”.

System Ready for the Christmas Campaign

One of the key goals was to design and implement the project rapidly. In just four months, Tag Ingenieros and Intermec carried out analyses of the processes and ran the pilot project, applying RFID technology to their processes and to the type of products they needed to identify, in order to ensure they worked well in the company environment. Once the pilot project was complete, the scanning devices were set up and installed. Everything was ready in time for the Christmas campaign, with zero impact on the company’s operational processes.

As Arastey says, “The processes were not affected at all, since one of the benefits of RFID is that it offers totally user-friendly technology. All we needed was a set of instructions in the dispatch process when loading the lorries, since all the pallets have to be loaded onto the lorry using mobile RFID docks”.

For the users and workers, the impact of the new technology has been very positive. “The new technology makes their tasks easier and they get help in validating the pallet to be shrink-wrapped and dispatched. The information shown on the screens installed at each of the RFID reading points also helps them make corrections”, Arastey adds.

By tracking each of the Christmas packages and hampers, the company now has an effective monitoring system at all of its premises, with a semi-automatic product validation system. The control and monitoring functions obtained by integrating the RFID technology into all the products means that they have a great deal of information available in real time associated with every single product. Information on the stock availability of a particular product, and the boxes which are being dispatched or which are at a specific warehouse can now be known at any time.

The per-unit tracking of each product has reduced complaints and refund requests from distributors and customers, since various checks and controls are being carried out up to the moment the orders are dispatched.

Fewer Errors, More Reliability

Another great success of this installation has been the reduction of errors and their associated huge costs in terms of refunds and product returns. “The error rate in the operatives’ identification processes has been reduced. An RFID portal is used to scan the whole pallet. Additionally, the operative is shown any errors which have occurred during the validation of the pallets or during loading, preventing orders getting mixed up”.

This offers a huge range of operational and administrative benefits. “Processes are completed in less time and a lot of information about the company’s current position is available. With less than a month to finalise the Christmas campaign, the installation of RFID technology has had positive results, since it has improvedthe company’s operational efficiency and productivity”, concludes Arastey.