Based in Fritzlar, Germany, family business Lemmi Fashion makes a range of children’s clothing in a broad variety of sizes, styles and colors. The company owes much of its success to this wide variety, but it does create an astonishing variety of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). With around 1,000,000 items per year and an average of 12.5 items per SKU, that means an annual total of around 80,000 SKUs. Lemmi CIO Götz Pfeifferling said, “When losing track of a single item can mean as much as a 25% drop in stock, it’s clearly important to have an efficient method of inventory control.”

Looking to solve its particular inventory tracking needs, Lemmi had tried a barcode system during the 90s, only to find it even slower than manual checks. Then, at the end of 2004, the ideal solution presented itself during a visit to the RFID Solution Excellence Center in Graz, Austria, operated by RF-iT Solutions. Lemmi was so impressed by a demonstration of RFID for SCM applications that they quickly made the decision to implement RFID in their own supply chain.

Implementation began in February 2005 and the completed system, which also involved goods being tagged by manufacturers in Asia and Poland, was up-and-running by April 2006.

The system was implemented by system integrator RF-IT and used NXP’s ICODE-based labels from Checkpoint.

It is now being used extensively throughout the company, with decisions from goods tracking to finance being made based on data captured along the supply chain. “Meeting the planned business case fully, it’s even giving an early return on investment,” said Götz. “It also reveals how many mistakes were being made before when we relied on manual checks! We’ve realized an 85% saving in shelf assignment and storage and a 60% increase for delivery assignment, along with completely eliminating any delay in knowing the status of incoming goods.” Improvements for Lemmi have been across the board, ultimately resulting in higher quality service and greater customer satisfaction, leading to increased sales.

With the successful roll-out of the project, others are keen to find out how Lemmi did it. Götz has been invited to speak at a number of international conferences on SCM. Lemmi is also working closely with its retail partners, showing them how they can use Lemmi’s RFID-labels to improve their own in-store operations.

Note: Article provided by Mr. Lutz

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