chrispeng [ad_1]
The French Art Network is an art chain store with four stores in New Orleans. Now Jack Sutton and his partners plan to open branches outside of New Orleans, but due to the expensive nature of artworks, they cannot accurately track and manage the employees and artworks in branches in other cities, so they are worried. “We have a new store in Carmel, California, but we are worried about the delivery of artworks (approximately US$2,000-20,000 per piece) (approximately 2,000 miles away) and store management.” Sutton said .
In March 2007, Sutton began discussing this issue with Silent Partner Technology, an RFID system developer and integrator. Silent President Ted Kostis suggested that Sutton open new stores in other regions and use RFID to improve the management and visibility of merchandise in all branches.
New Orleans art chain The French Art Network
The RFID system allows Sutton and his employees to automatically count artworks and understand the location of 75-150 artworks in each branch. “We took inventory once a month in the past, but in fact, it may be once a quarter or half a year. According to the database, there is a big discrepancy between the number of goods in each store and the actual situation,” Sutton said.
Silent Partner spent 6 months developing an RFID system for The French Art Network. The new system uses active RFID tags and readers to automatically count items while also preventing the theft of artworks. Four stores in New Orleans and a new store in Carmel have adopted this system. Kostis said The French Art Network also plans to use the system in three other new stores (located in Carmel and New Mexico) in August. “With this system, we have stronger capabilities in store management and monitoring, and we can rest assured to open more stores in other regions,” Sutton said.
When a new artwork is delivered to The French Art Network’s main warehouse and distribution center, employees enter the name of the artwork and other information in the database developed by Silent Partner, such as the artist’s name, item description, cost, and sales price . The worker then reads a Wavetrend tag and associates the ID number of the tag with the artwork in the database. Finally, the staff used Velcro to stick the label on the artwork.
The WEB-based database is updated every 10 minutes so that branch employees can see the latest inventory catalog. After the artwork is labeled and registered in inventory, it can be shipped to a branch, or the branch manager can place an order to request the item to be shipped.
The French Art Network uses active RFID tags and readers to automatically count and track artworks
Active tagIts operating frequency is 433 MHz, and it uses a patented air interface protocol. The reader network of each branch can read tags at any location in the branch. The label also has another main function: that is, you can clearly know whether the label has been passive. “If someone can remove the label of the artwork and leave it in the store, then this RFID system will have no value. So Silent Partner has spent a lot of time solving this problem. Now this system can be called impeccable. “Sutton said.
The Wavetrend tag contains a magnetic switch, controlled by a magnet embedded in a Velcro. When the label is attached to the artwork, the magnetic switch is triggered; when the label is removed from the artwork, the switch is turned on, and the event is recorded in the label memory.There is also one for each artworkBar code, Corresponding to the number of the artwork tag in the back-end database.
When an artwork is sold, employees scan the barcode and remove the RFID tag. Then, the software corresponds the tag removal event to the artwork sales event. If the barcode is not read when the label is removed, the software sends an alert to the manager via email. The manager then searches for the artwork based on the latest in-store location of the artwork recorded in the database, and investigates whether the label has been removed without being sold.
Moreover, because the label can track the number of times its magnetic switch is operated, the software also determines whether someone has removed the label of one artwork and affixed it to another artwork.
In addition, the software can also track the movement of the labeled artwork between different branches through the reading of the tags by readers in different branches.
Through software settings, managers can receive real-time sales notification emails for each piece of art, or alerts that labels have been removed for no reason. According to Sutton, if the system can prevent the theft of one or two works of art, he will be able to recoup the return on investment within a year.
[ad_2]
