La Senza RFID Pilot Overview

Bell Canada Enterprise Wireless Solutions

Key Pilot Objectives

Increase the visibility into La Senza’s re-usable container assets through the implementation of an RFID-based tracking solution.

Increase the expertise of La Senza Operations and IT staff with RFID technology, frameworks, and solution sets.

The main goals of the RFID solution at La Senza:

High Level Solution Overview

RFID Bin-tracking Benefits

Streamline shipping process at the DC by integrating with La Senza’s 3PL Shipping System, reduce the use of human intervention (barcode scanning) on all outgoing shipments from the DC.

More timely and more accurate inventory information on goods at the Store, DC, and in-transit.

Reduce human intervention for receiving inventory at stores, increasing time spent with the customer.

Reduction in number of lost bins and “over-due” bins waiting or hidden at stores.

Identified bin-tracking application benefits:

La Senza RFID Pilot Results

Results

• Read performance was an important metric, since inventory levels would be dependant on consistent and reliable read. For the pilot read performance was as follows:

• DC Outbound – 100%• Store Inbound – 100%• Store Outbound – 93% (mostly due to LAN

connectivity issues, a target for improvement in the next phase).

• The pilot has proved the physical viability and performance of the solution, we also identified different ways to adapt it for a production, mass volume scenario.

• The pilot has helped established a budgetary cost per store for expanding the bin tracking application at La Senza.

• Key learning's have been established for future RFID systems at La Senza, which could include item-level tagging applications.

The pilot established the feasibility of the bin-tracking application and offered a preview of the supply chain intelligence a production deployment would provide.

How the information was used

• Web-based reports showing the real-time and historical status of orders served as the main user interface.

• Delivery and receipt “anomalies” were identified

• In our post-mortem analysis, we were able to determine the following metrics:

• Average, longest, & shortest roundtrip time

• Average transit time from DC/Store & Store/DC

• Longest/shortest transit times

• Longest DC/Store, Store/DC

• Shortest DC/Store, Store/DC

• As the pilot is expanded these and other performance metrics will be reported, e.g:

• Turnover

• Delivery time variance by week/day/shift/carrier

• Top X stores with worst bin turnover

• Top Y stores with best bin turnover

Next Steps

Next Steps

1. Expand the current pilot project to include additional functionality including:

• Integration to existing merchandising and WMS systems

• A comparison of in-store handheld with fixed readers

• Additional applications which will leverage the current RFID hardware infrastructure.

2. Expand the footprint of the current pilot to include more stores, and different kinds of stores.

3. Explore the possibility of other RFID applications, including item-level tagging for in-store inventory visibility.

In 2007, La Senza will further investigate how RFID can be utilized to drive business value via expansion and integration with existing systems.