The study program „international supply chain management“ has hosted an exciting project with the Global Top Brand PUMA
The study program “international supply chain management” has hosted an exciting project with the Global Top Brand PUMA, where two international groups of students have analyzed and drafted a potential implementation of RFID technology within the supply chain of the Austrian subsidiary.
RFID has become a major opportunity in the supply chain departments of many industries based on its attractive ability to collect, cross-check and process critical supply chain data and KPI’s in an automated way. Major improvements can be outlined with reductions of costs and the speed up of throughput times accompanied by live data of the current status of each single item.
The project has covered all major dimensions starting with stakeholder interviews to identify the major expectations from the management and experts. A comprehensive technology check has delivered insights concerning the current technical options and frame conditions. Several interviews with global market players within the sporting industry have unveiled major learnings and critical success factors that could be directly transferred to a RFID boosted supply chain process that have been visualized with up to date software tools.
The results of the different project phases have been reported to the project owners. The broad variety of potential technical solutions with it’s specific advantages and requirements have been analyzed and discussed in detail.
The calculation of necessary up front costs with Readers, Label printers, RFID cabinets and gates and RFID Antennas in the warehouses have a major impact on the return of investment.
A comparison with RFID implementations at Decathlon, Zara or Under Armour or C&A as well as insights from industry experts have unveiled a realistic perspective of successes and major pitfalls.
The transparency of flows of goods with enhanced planning opportunities and a better availability of products in the stores have been mentioned as major advantages of the RFID technology.
The final presentation on Thursday, December 19th at PUMA subsidiary have concluded the exciting project with positive feedback from the Austrian PUMA office.
Many thanks to Puma for the great support and the opportunity to work on an exciting project.
project management: Verena Ebner, Eva Leitner
project members: Federica Ercoli, Armin Pernat, Franz Moser, Verena Scheuba, Pia Brigitte Auran, Thom Van Hal, Live Skille, Shannon Schuettke, Christian Hjelle
project coach: Margot Elwischger
© Mag. Margot Elwischger, MIM, MBA