Logistics Professionals Hail CLEOR as the "King of the Supply Chain"
CLEOR Revolutionizes Logistics in the Jewellery Trade Thanks to an RFID Solution from Frequentiel, Toshiba TEC and Psion Teklogix
19 January 2010
On January 19, 2010, in front of 600 logistics professionals at the Buddha Bar in Paris, CLEOR's Gilles Bennejean, CEO, and Aurélien Sénéchal, COO, received Supply Chain Magazine's "King of the Supply Chain 2010" trophy. The project, designed in partnership with Frequentiel and Toshiba TEC for RFID printers and Psion Teklogix for WORKABOUT PRO RFID PDAs, received an overwhelming number of votes from the professionals in attendance. In the end, it outshone the other 24 competing proposals vying in technical ingenuity and originality. A very promising technology's concrete, tested and proven contributions to the logistics/distribution sector therefore made all the difference in the eyes of the decision-makers.
Click here to watch a video of CLEOR'S RFID project.
With 49 stores in northern and western France and the unique concept of turning jewellery into a real fashion accessory, CLEOR is renowned for its sense of innovation in all its forms: marketing, products and now logistics. To free up its sales staff from restrictive, time-consuming rotating inventories and to boost productivity, the company is using RFID technology to manage its stock at its outlets and storage centre. With Frequentiel’s RFID expertise and Psion Teklogix’ WORKABOUT PRO terminals, CLEOR now manages its 800,000 RFID-tagged items in an optimal manner and regularly takes rotating inventories of jewellery store displays with minimal handling.
CLEOR's challenge: Managing the flow and inventory of its 800,000 items using RFID technology
In the jewellery trade, where items and labels are characteristically tiny and barcodes are therefore difficult to read, taking an inventory and checking goods can quickly become an arduous, time-consuming task for one or more store clerks. Aurélien Sénéchal, CLEOR's Chief Operating Officer, adds, "Moreover, the value of the in-store stock requires us to take regular rotating inventories, which meant our salespeople had to handle the jewellery on display and put it back in the display cabinets once each barcode was read. With jewellery items averaging 10,000 per store, a great deal of time was spent on the inventory. So much so that, when we went to a store, we would always see a salesperson plunging into a display cabinet taking the inventory!" To enable its salespeople to focus on their core business—sales and customer consulting services—CLEOR decided to exploit the potential of RFID technology in order to tag all of its products, increase reliability during the preparatory, shipping and receiving phases, and improve stock traceability.
Aurélien Sénéchal confided, "While gathering competitive intelligence, we discovered that, through RFID technology, an RFID antenna and chip could be inserted in tags for contactless scanning. We were blown away by the efficiency and performance of the first tests we did in our showroom." In response to these initial results, CLEOR wants to use handheld and desktop RFID readers in its storage centre and its 49 points of sale. In the winter of 2009, CLEOR launched a request for proposals in order to select the partner with whom it could rise to this new logistics challenge!
Psion Teklogix and Frequentiel's solution: A tailor-made, readily-implementable RFID solution
After surveying the various RFID technology players, CLEOR opted for Frequentiel, a reputable technology specialist, and Psion Teklogix, a world-renowned terminal manufacturer, in April 2009. Aurélien Sénéchal says, "In addition to Frequentiel's involvement and pricing method, we were won over by their groundbreaking technology response, which was exactly what we were looking for. In addition to developing software interfaces, one of Psion Teklogix’ partner's great strengths was its ability to design and manufacture tailor-made RFID racket readers." They are perfectly adapted to Psion Teklogix’ WORKABOUT PRO readers to ensure easy handling in any display case and 100% successful barcode readings in record time. Once Frequentiel was selected, an external provider began re-tagging the 800,000 items. These small tags contain an RFID antenna and a chip with a unique identifier. RFID technology has therefore been very important to CLEOR logistics since the fall of 2009.
Benefits for CLEOR: Increased productivity and logistics efficiency from the storage centre to the outlets
This RFID project, the only of its kind in France, now guarantees multiple benefits for CLEOR in terms of productivity, efficiency and client satisfaction. "Our jewellery is usually grouped together in physical batches of about a hundred or so items. Before, we had to unpack each item to scan the tag. Now, the operator instantly reads the batch of items, either by placing them on the RFID desktop reader or by using the WORKABOUT PRO and its RFID antenna," says Aurélien Sénéchal. The same is true for the rotating inventory. "We don't touch the display cabinets any more to inventory our products! All we do is dip the antenna into the cabinet; every time a new product is read, the reader beeps in confirmation. The speed and accuracy are impressive, particularly as we now apply very stringent merchandising standards to arrange our displays."
Laurent Delaby, Frequentiel's co-founder, is very pleased with his client's first results: "We recorded a very significant increase in productivity. In theory, an inventory that took four days with the traditional method can now be completed in just four hours! This fully meets CLEOR's expectations, as the company wanted to free up its salespeople from these painstaking, low-productivity tasks and enable them to devote most of their time to sales." According to Aurélien Sénéchal, "The project is producing real surges in productivity. And there's more to come, as this first project, the only one of its kind in France, paves the way to a new generation of smart display cabinets!"
About CLEOR
CLEOR's adventure began in 1997 and was soon a success story. The company anticipated changes in the jewellery market and turned jewellery into real fashion accessories. By 2002, the company had opened 11 stores. Leveraging its strong growth, CLEOR took over the Goldy stores in late 2003 and added 23 new outlets to its existing 16 shops. In 2007, CLEOR bought out the 13 Mathy stores. The CLEOR network now boasts 49 points of sale, mainly in the northern part of France. In just a few years, CLEOR has succeeded in attracting and securing young dynamic customers who care about their appearance and their budget. For more information visit www.cleor.com
About Frequentiel
Frequentiel is a service provider specializing in identification and traceability technologies, particularly RFID (radio frequency identification). It offers comprehensive service: Consulting, Engineering and Integration. It provides a single point of contact between the company and the RFID hardware and software solution providers. Frequentiel handles all the concerns involved in a given RFID project, from the initial opportunity study to rolling out a productive application.
Now that the RFID market has reached a high level of maturity, companies are seeking global service offerings with commercial impartiality. Frequentiel has decided to rise to that challenge as the driving force of their RFID projects.
For more information, visit http://www.frequentiel.com/_images/frequentiel_en.pdf
About Toshiba TEC
Headquartered in Brussels, Toshiba TEC Europe Retail Information Systems was created in October 2000 by grouping together all European operations for distribution software solutions, barcode printing and RFID. We have branches in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and subsidiary companies in Italy and Poland.
For more information, visit http://www.toshibatec-eu.com/Europe/en/products/printers/overview_printers/
About Psion Teklogix
Psion Teklogix is the operating division of the Psion Group, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange. Psion Teklogix facilitates the everyday work of mobile operators throughout the world. Our terminals and PDAs are designed, built and supported to maximize what Psion Teklogix refers to as Return on Mobility™. This tagline summarizes and embodies our determination to help our clients lower the total cost of their mobile solution, increase the task efficiencies of mobile workers and extend the life of each of our products. With Return on Mobility™, Psion Teklogix provides companies in the Field Service, Maintenance, Supply Chain and Passenger Transportation sectors with concrete support in their efforts to move forward. Psion Teklogix is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada with corporate offices in Europe. Psion Teklogix’ French subsidiary also has a European maintenance and repair centre that employs 100 service people in Aix-en-Provence.
Media Contacts:
Gwendoline Bodineau
Media Relations Officer
Tel.: 01 48 97 78 16 / 06 15 91 48 18
gwendoline-bodineau@orange.fr
José Perez
Marketing Director. Psion Teklogix
Tel.: 01 64 86 24 00
jose.perez@psionteklogix.com
www.psionteklogix.com
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