U.S. pharmacy chain giant Walgreens adopts RFID system on a large scale in distribution centers to reduce freight errors
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Pharmaceutical retailer Walgreens installed an RFID system for the company’s 600,000-square-foot distribution center in Anderson. The system will alert employees when they load goods onto the wrong truck (delivered to retail stores in the southeastern United States). Help the company reduce cargo loading errors and eliminate paper records.
One of the world’s top 500 companies Walgreens Pharmacy (Walgreens)
This system, implemented by RFID equipment company Blue Vector, enables Walgreens’ warehouse management system to automatically send pre-shipment notifications when products leave the center. The system includes 170,000 plastic containers with EPC Gen 2 passive RFID tags, some labelled trolleys, and 45 Blue Vector RFID door readers installed in the warehouse door and elsewhere in the center.
Walgreens has piloted this RFID system a year ago, and it has worked well. Now the retailer has installed the same system in its Connecticut distribution center.
The distribution center in Anderson City was completed and put into use in 2007. Nearly half of the employees in the center have physical or intellectual defects. One of Walgreen’s original intentions for adopting the RFID system was to make it easier for employees’ daily work, said John Beans, deputy director of marketing at Blue Vector. The company’s ultimate goal is to reduce the delivery error rate of all distribution centers and eliminate paper records.
When a cargo box is delivered to the wrong shipping door, or the cargo box is loaded onto the truck in the wrong order, the system will issue an alarm notification. A truck often transports multiple goods to different stores, and the goods must be loaded onto the truck in the order of delivery.
Walgreens uses a plastic container with a size of approximately 2 feet * 18 inches * 12 inches. When the center receives an order, the employee puts the required goods into the container, puts it and other containers on a trolley, and then the trolley passes through the warehouse door.
In the past, the staff read the delivery list of the goods, then used a scanner to read the barcode label of the container, log in to the warehouse management system on the computer, log off the delivery of the goods, and ensure the correct loading order of the containers. The truck loading process of the old system is very troublesome and error-prone, especially when more than a dozen trucks destined for different destinations are loaded at the same time, Beans said.
After adopting the Blue Vector system, Avery Dennison’s RFID tags were installed on the sides of all the boxes. Empty containers waiting to be loaded are stacked in a storage area. When an order list is sent to the center, the warehouse management system automatically shares it with Blue Vector’s system server. When the employee puts the container full of goods on a conveyor belt and sends it to the trolley, a Blue Vector portal reader reads the ID number of the container label and corresponds it to the order. In this way, the system knows the cargo in the container.
The full cargo box is then placed in a trolley (the trolley is also labeled), and when pushed to the warehouse door, it passes through a Blue Vector RFID door reader. The reader is 7 feet high and includes a Motorola RFID reader and an LED screen that displays data related to the cargo boxes, including the location where they will be loaded.
The cart then passes through the correct warehouse door, and another Blue Vector door reader scans the ID number of each container and the cart tag. If a batch of containers passes through the wrong warehouse door, or the batch is loaded in the wrong order , The system issues an alarm.
Once the boxes are loaded into the correct truck in the correct order, the Blue Vector portal reader sends a notification to the warehouse management system via a wired connection, and the system then forwards the notification to the receiving store. After the empty container is sent back to the distribution center, the reader reads the label, and the staff cleans the empty container and scans the label again. The damaged container or the container with unreadable label shall be sent to the repair shop for repair or replacement.
This system includes 45 door readers, one installed at every other warehouse door. The reader includes Blue Vector’s edge manager software, which can match the ID number of the container label with the shipping data and identify errors. All the readers installed on the warehouse doors or conveyor belts are managed by 65 edge managers. The software receives information from the readers and analyzes the location of the cargo box based on those read data. Then, the edge manager shares relevant data with the Blue Vector network.
According to Beans, the system was tested in 2007 when only a few RFID readers were used. When the distribution center was completed, Walgreens fully activated the system. The distribution center transported approximately 80,000 labeled containers to more than 700 stores every day.
About Walgreens
Walgreens, one of the world’s top 500 companies, is the second largest national pharmacy chain after the CVS chain pharmacy in the United States. It now receives more than 148 million prescriptions every year.
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