OATSystems
Announces RFID Asset Tracking and Work-in-Process
Solution
HP and
Tesco Using New Solution to Error-proof
Deliveries and Increase Supply Chain
and Manufacturing Efficiencies
WALTHAM, Mass. – Sept.
17, 2007 – OATSystems today
announced its Asset
Tracking and Work-in-Process Solution,
which is available immediately.
The RFID solution, which has already
been implemented at a number of customer
sites, including Hewlett-Packard Brazil
and Tesco, enables industrial, aerospace
and automotive manufacturers as well
as retailers to improve asset visibility
and utilization, enhance work-in-process
manufacturing, increase supply chain
efficiencies, reduce shrink, and error-proof
deliveries.
Unlike custom
code development, OAT’s
Asset Tracking solution incorporates
the industry’s best practices and
proven use cases, enabling organizations
to deploy solutions in less time, with
less risk and with less cost. In addition,
customers can use the solution’s
high-level graphical tooling to quickly
and easily create, modify and adapt processing
to meet their specific needs.
Whether a business needs to track assets
or gain visibility into work-in-process
operations, OAT can integrate data from
heterogeneous tag sources including passive,
active and sensory tags. This integration
gives business users visibility into
inventory and asset movement throughout
their operations and manufacturing processes
from geographically dispersed facilities
and across an array of trading partners.
“OATSystems has leveraged its
broad RFID experience and industry leading
market position to offer a dynamic asset
tracking and work-in-process solution,” said
Drew Nathanson, RFID practice director
for Venture Development Corporation,
a technology market research and strategy
firm. “This product addresses
key primary end user requirements such
as rapid and simple customization and
integration, scalability, and mitigation
of investment and technological risks.”
Asset tracking
continues to be a costly challenge
that virtually all manufacturing companies
face. According to a study conducted
this year by the Council of Supply
Chain Management Professionals, businesses’ total
logistics costs—that
is, transportation, inventory carrying,
and order administration costs—have
skyrocketed more than 64 percent in the
past decade. Furthermore, in an Aberdeen
report titled “RFID-Enabled
Logistics Asset Management: Improving
Capital Utilization, Increasing Availability,
and Lowering Total Operational Costs," almost
half of respondents reported that logistics
asset operations consume 5% or more of
corporate revenue and almost one-fifth
say it consumes more than one-tenth of
revenue.
Businesses use OAT’s Asset
Tracking Solution to reduce these costs
and improve operations. OAT’s solution
provides support for the entire RFID
process from tagging to data capture
to automation and error proofing of business
processes to analysis. The OAT solution
also enables users to gain deep insights
with a suite of analyses and reports
that include asset timeline utilization,
visual track and trace, historical analysis,
real-time visibility into the assets
and their contents, and status and exception
reports to highlight process anomalies.
The solution is available immediately.
“With more than 200 RFID deployments
on five continents, OAT has gained substantial
experience that has been incorporated
into this solution delivering proven
use cases that work out-of-the-box,” said
Michael George, CEO of OATSystems.
HP Brazil Reduces Printer Inventory
by 17 Percent
HP Brazil estimates that OAT’s
new solution has reduced its printer
inventory by 17 percent by increasing
visibility into the location of its products.
Using OATSystems Asset Tracking Solution,
HP tracks its printers from their origin
on the assembly line through critical
transition points to their eventual outbound
shipment.
HP also uses
the system to create product “DNA” to
save unique information on the RFID tag
for each printer. By saving information
such as install-by dates and testing
results, HP tracks and identifies printers
returned for repairs under warranty.
Having a full record of the printer’s
history has enabled HP to improve its
repair service and allowed it to return
printers to customers much more efficiently.
Today, the OAT solution is supporting
nine RFID-enabled manufacturing and product
completion lines producing over three
million products annually.
“You can’t measure the return
on investment in the traditional way,” said
Marcelo Pandini, manager of RFID and
Business Development at HP Brazil. “You
can’t presume a savings because
you don’t know what you don’t
know. With RFID, we have learned that
we can make our operations better.”
Tesco Error-Proofs
Deliveries to its Stores
Tesco, with more
than 2,000 stores and thirty distribution
centers around the world, faces the complex
challenge of ensuring that the right
inventory reaches the right store at
precisely the right time. Over the past
year, Tesco has been working on a project
using OATSystems' Asset Tracking solution
to track inventory shipments from its
distribution centers to stores. This
solution error-proofs the shipping process
by alerting store staff when a container
is delivered to a store in error.
“OATSystems has given us visibility
into our supply chain that was not possible
before,” said Chris Brocklesby,
director of UK IT, Tesco. “It has
enabled us to see where and when delivery
errors occur and better understand how
this impacts stores and therefore customers.”
Distribution Partners
OAT
is taking this asset tracking and work-in-process
solution to market through Avery Dennison, Domino
ISG, IBM, Miles
Technologies, Rush
Tracking Systems, Tyco
Electronics, and other channel partners.
About OATSystems, Inc.
OATSystems, Inc. is the recognized RFID
solution leader with software that
empowers businesses to achieve competitive
advantage and ROI from radio-frequency
identification (RFID) enabled applications.
As a pioneer in developing RFID technology,
OAT has been setting the standards
in RFID for over half a decade and
is responsible for industry firsts
that include the largest scale and
largest scope of deployments, as well
as the most innovative approaches to
providing enterprise-wide RFID solutions.
OAT’s multinational client base
consists of nearly 100 customers in
retail, CPG, consumer electronics,
manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace
and defense. OAT is headquartered in
Waltham, MA, and has a development
office in Bangalore and various direct
sales offices and resellers around
the globe. To learn more about the
company’s latest developments,
visit the website at www.oatsystems.com.
CONTACT:
George Cohen (for OATSystems)
George Cohen Communications
(617) 325-0011
[email protected]
All companies and products listed herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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