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HONG KONG: Cisco Systems and Intel Corporation are developing Electronic Product Code/ Radio Frequency Identification (EPC/RFID) enabled solutions for EPCglobal Hong Kong’s EPCnetwork infrastructure, which will connect manufacturers and logistics companies in the PPRD with retailers worldwide.
The EPC is a unique number that identifies a specific item in the supply chain. The EPC is stored on an RFID tag, which can be attached to or incorporated into a product or an item for shipment. Once the EPC is retrieved from the tag, it can be associated with dynamic data such as where an item originated or the date of its production.
The use of EPC and RFID together makes individual items and their movements throughout the supply chain more visible to all parties, who can use these technologies to retrieve pertinent product data quickly and easily at any time without human intervention or error.
Among other things, this means that ongoing issues in inventory management, shrinkage, fraud and theft that retailers and distributors face can be addressed. For instance, an out-of-stock average of 9 percent for retailers worldwide translates into U.S. $69 billion in lost sales each year, and global counterfeiting adds a further U.S. $305 billion annually†. The use of RFID and the adoption of global standards can reduce this loss as it improves visibility for all parties throughout the supply chain network.
The supply chain solution based on the EPCnetwork infrastructure, which will allow manufacturers, logistics firms and global retailers to reduce operational costs and improve profitability through real-time data utilization and highly effective collaboration, said the company in a statement.
Currently, an average of 11 weeks of inventory stock is held in warehouses and distribution centers around the world. Better supply chain management can reduce this considerably, thus helping to cut both the volume of items in inventory and the associated rental or fixed asset costs of storage and distribution, the release stated.
Based on the recently announced Cisco RFID Solution, the EPC intelligent network infrastructure will help enterprises to increase visibility into product information. The key elements of the Cisco RFID Solution include the Cisco Application Oriented Network for RFID, Cisco Services for RFID and the Cisco Wireless Location Service.
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