Case Study: Megatrux Improves Service And Reduces Costs With RFID

Megatrux is always on the lookout for ways to leverage technology to maintain an edge in the highly competitive 3PL industry, where customer service and lean pricing are king. With rising fuel costs threatening already slender margins, the company was seeking a way to further streamline operations to reduce labor costs — while improving customer service levels. In addition, since many Megatrux customers are also Wal-Mart suppliers, the company was already aware of the value that RFID-enabled shipping could provide — and RFID solutions were already under investigation.

Megatrux determined that deploying RFID in the warehouse would address multiple business needs. The efficiency and accuracy of everyday warehouse operations would be improved by automating traditionally manual processes. The valuable real-time data from RFID could allow Megatrux and its customers to monitor the ‘right now' status of shipments at any time of the day. And the company could also offer a new service — RFID compliance — to its customers.

A Motorola RFID solution was put to the test at Megatrux's busiest warehouse — a 175,000 square foot facility in California that processes over one million cases for Wal-Mart alone, every year. KC Pelle, Executive Vice President of The Megatrux Companies commented: "When it came to selecting a vendor for our RFID implementation, we wanted the best — and Motorola was the clear leader in data capture solutions. Together, Motorola and Ship2Save offered the technological and industry expertise we needed to achieve success from day one."

The solution deployed consisted of Motorola's XR440 Fixed RFID readers and AN400 High-Performance RFID Antennas at the five import and export warehouse dock doors; two RFID Gen2 EPC thermal label printers for on-the-spot printing of RFID tags; a Motorola MC9090-G RFID Handheld Reader to enable anywhere anytime reading of RFID tags; and the glue that enabled the easy integration of the solution into the company's existing business systems — Ship2Save's Operation Management System (S2S-OMS®) middleware application.