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Madura Garments explores RFID

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CIOL Bureau
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Kavitha Alexis

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BANGALORE: After Pantaloon, it is the turn of apparel major Madura Garments to explore the possibilities of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). To start with, the company is planning to implement RFID solution in the retail front end as an initial proof of concept (POC). Once the real time benefits are proved, the company plans to roll it out in a phased manner.

Speaking to CIOL, Madura Garments vice president — IT and e-commerce NP Singh said, “ Initially, we are planning to tag all the garments going to a particular retail store from our central warehouse. After studying the benefits, the senior management would take a call on the roll out plans”. The identified Planet Fashion (exclusive outlet of the company) store in Bangalore keeps around 8000 garments at any time.

The company is in discussion with a couple of solution providers including HP and Wipro Infotech. The POC implementation should start in the next two to three months, Singh said.

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Madura Garments plans to use non-disposable tags, which would come back to the warehouse from the store, and will be rewritten for reuse. “Today RFID tags are high value items, which cost Rs 50 upwards. Unless the prices come down, it does not make sense to use disposable tags”, Singh said, adding “even then the cost incurred would be very high including infrastructure costs like readers in the store and the warehouse, tag writing machines, etc.

According to Singh, other than the first mover advantage in adopting the technology, the RFID tagging is also expected to bring in increased sales, better labor efficiency, easy stock taking and productivity enhancement. There are proven benefits of RFID in the entire supply chain of multiple enterprises, he said. In India, it is awareness time for RFID and it might take another two to three years for the prices to come down and implementation gets large scale, he added.

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