MIKOH takes a 'smart and secure' approach to inventory tracking
Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 8/14/2008
WASHINGTON—A new application from MIKOH Corporation, a provider of physical security and digital marking and consulting services, pledges to provide shippers with a packaged solution that delivers physical security and tamper evidence for inventory management and advanced RFID applications within warehouse and distribution center environments, according to the company.
Dubbed Smart&Secure Warehouse, MIKOH said this application works in tandem with its SecureContainer (a reusable container with a unique closure system) and SecureEnclosure (used to seal larger containers and storage rooms) technologies to address physical security vulnerabilities—like inventory theft and tampering—associated with RFID across warehouse and distribution center applications.
The way in which Smart&Secure Warehouse helps shippers keep an eye on their warehouse inventory is by validating the relationship between and RFID tag and the product or container to which it is attached, noted Mikoh. It added that the application has a tamper evident seal that disables RFID functionality if a tag is removed or compromised. MIKOH also has a more sophisticated version of this application which alerts an RFID reader that the tag has been compromised without disabling RFID functionality and enabling the ongoing retrieval of data stored on the tag.
“RFID has been penetrating warehouses for a while to facilitate how assets are managed through the lifecycle of a warehouse,” said Andrew Strauch, MIKOH vice president of product marketing and management. “What we have seen based on talking with some cusotmers is that theft and misplacement of products [in the warehouse] has increased. So what is happening is people are relying on automated ways of tracking inventory, which has resulted in a reduction in their workforce and left them more exposed to people migrating equipment out the door...by peeling off an RFID label or removing inventory with lift trucks. The inventory is basically taken by the presence of that tag, but it does not necessarily mean that the tag is still associated with the assets. So someone may think they have taken inventory, but in many cases they haven’t, because the assets have been separated from the tag. So until they try and pull the inventory from a shelf, they won’t have any visibility to the face that something has happened to their goods.”
What MIKOH is doing with Smart&Secure Warehouse, said Strauch, is work with shippers to implement various types of warehouse management systems that incorporate RFID technology, as well as ensure that as shippers are automating their processes RFID tags are associated with the same assets.
Strauch added that Smart&Secure Warehouse is geared towards protecting valuable goods, as opposed to something like paper towels or corrugated cardboard, for example.
“This technology applies more to somebody pulling together customized loads on a computer—or high-value added electronics parts like chips,” he said. “What some people have found with assets that have gotten lost is that the pattern is comprised of materials migrating through the warehouse and then clear the dock door and the targeted goods will be brought out through the dock door area. This is where people are seeing mishandling and product theft and want to have a better handle to track what is going on.”
And if an RFID tag is manipulated or placed on an empty box or left on a shelf, it can still be read, explained Strauch. But the MIKOH tags detect assets the next time the tag will be read either when the tag tries to be read and there is no tag to be read and the inventory that is supposed to be there is not reconciled.
If an RFID tag does not have a disabling or alerting function—coupled with increased automation—there is no real way for a warehouse to understand and inventory tampering or theft problem has occurred, said Reik Read, senior technology analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.
“I think what MIKOH is bringing to the table is an offering that says ‘hey, wait a second people may want to switch RFID tags, and we are giving them a solution that prevents them from being able to do that.’…[because] either the tag gets killed and an alert goes off if something leaves and does not get scanned or if a tag gets compromised.”
Read added that RFID provides companies with a lot of different use cases, and security is one of them. But he added that to have proper security, RFID needs to be leveraged at the physical level, as well as the electronic level.
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