Tracking inventory becomes much harder when every item is unique.
For a national omnichannel retailer and manufacturer, customer-specific items moved between retail stores, fulfillment operations, production areas, and final assembly. Each item could follow a different path, and losing visibility into even one could create additional work internally while delaying the customer waiting for it.
The retailer needed a faster way to audit inventory and a more reliable way to understand where individual items were as they moved through the operation.
Avancir implemented a hybrid RFID system designed around those workflows. The solution combines RFID handheld readers, RFID printing and tagging, and Avancir’s software platform to connect item identification with status, location, and operational activity.
The Challenge: Tracking Unique Items Through Multiple Workflows
Traditional inventory processes are often easier when items are interchangeable. If one unit of a product is identical to another, inventory teams may only need to confirm how many units are available.
That was not the case here.
Many of the retailer’s items were unique and associated with individual customer orders. An item could move through intake, pickup, cross-dock operations, production, and final assembly before reaching the end of its workflow.
When inventory information depended heavily on manual processes, checking large groups of items took significant time. It also became more difficult to identify where a specific item had gone when its physical location did not match expectations.
That could lead to more than an inventory discrepancy. A misplaced or misrouted item could affect fulfillment efficiency and ultimately delay the customer order associated with it.
The retailer needed a system capable of identifying items quickly while also maintaining visibility into where each one was in the process.
The Solution: A Hybrid RFID Approach
Avancir implemented a hybrid RFID architecture using handheld readers, RFID printer/encoders, RFID-tagged customer items, and software designed to support both current mobile workflows and future fixed RFID automation.
Employees can use handheld RFID readers during receiving, inventory, movement, and audit processes. Because RFID does not require users to scan each item individually in the same way a traditional barcode workflow does, employees can identify multiple tagged items more efficiently during an inventory check.
That distinction becomes especially valuable when audits involve large numbers of unique items.
RFID printing and tagging provide each item with an identifier that can remain associated with it throughout the workflow, while Avancir manages the operational information surrounding those reads.
Connecting RFID Reads With Item Status and Movement
The deployment was not designed simply to make inventory counting faster.
Each item also needed to move through the correct business process.
Avancir’s Monitoring Engine manages the logic associated with item movement and supports workflows including intake, customer pickup, cross-dock movement, production routing, final assembly, status automation, and exception handling.
As RFID activity occurs, Avancir can help update item status and location without relying exclusively on employees to complete separate manual updates for every movement.
That creates a more useful system than RFID identification alone. Knowing that a tag was read provides one piece of information; understanding what that read means within the item’s workflow provides the operational context needed to act on it.
For example, an RFID event can be tied to whether an item has entered a location, moved to another stage of production, reached a pickup workflow, or requires exception handling.
The Results: Inventory Audits in Minutes Instead of Hours
The most immediate improvement came from inventory auditing.
Batch audits that previously required hours can now be completed in minutes, allowing employees to identify large numbers of tagged items much more quickly.
Faster audits also give teams more current information about the inventory they are working with. Instead of spending as much time manually checking individual items, employees can focus on locating exceptions and resolving items that are not where they are expected to be.
The RFID-enabled workflow has also contributed to:
- Fewer lost or misrouted items
- Improved real-time item visibility
- More efficient retail and fulfillment workflows
- Faster identification of unique customer items
- Reduced labor associated with manual inventory counts
- Better fulfillment visibility
- Fewer avoidable delays affecting the customer experience
The deployment currently spans five sites and has supported tracking across more than 750,000 work orders.
Building a Path From Mobile RFID to Fixed Automation
The hybrid architecture was also designed with future expansion in mind.
Handheld RFID readers provide flexibility because employees can bring the reader to the workflow rather than requiring fixed infrastructure everywhere an item may move. That makes them useful for inventory audits, receiving, searching for specific items, and other processes where mobility matters.
Fixed RFID readers serve a different purpose. Installed at defined read points, they can capture tag movement automatically as items pass through particular areas.
Avancir’s software architecture allows the retailer to use mobile RFID where it makes sense today while establishing a path toward additional fixed read zones as transaction volume and automation requirements increase.
That gives the operation room to expand automation without replacing the workflows already in place.
Why Item Tracking Requires More Than Faster Inventory Counts
The key challenge in this deployment was not simply knowing whether an item was physically present.
The retailer also needed to know where each unique item was in its operational journey.
That requires connecting RFID identification with status, location, workflow rules, and exception handling. Without that context, a faster inventory count may tell employees which tags are nearby without telling them whether those items are where they should be or what should happen next.
Avancir provides the software and workflow layer that connects those RFID events with the retailer’s business processes.
For omnichannel operations managing large volumes of unique customer items, that connection can help inventory visibility extend beyond periodic counting and become part of the fulfillment process itself.
Want to see how Avancir can support your inventory, item-tracking, or RFID workflows? Learn more about Avancir and explore how the platform can be configured around your operation.
