Recall Canada strives for ‘perfect audit’ with RFID rollout

Speed, unprecedented accuracy, and a document management process that saves customers time and money, while minimizing the risk of public exposure – these, are some benefits Recall Canada expects from its use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the records management process.

The company has rolled out an RFID-based document-management system at it facility in Brampton, Ont.

Company officials demoed the new system, Friday, to a clutch of customers – current and prospective – and journalists.

A subsidiary of the Brambles Group, Atlanta, Ga.-based Recall has 78,000 customers in 20 countries.

Earlier this year, Recall unveiled what it said was the industry’s first RFID-enabled document storage and management facility in Northborough, Mass.

Here in Canada, the RFID project at its Brampton facility is also a first for Recall - and the company says it's already generating interest. “In Canada today we have three customers using RFID,” said Sean O'Brien, Recall's General Manager of Canadian Operations.

The technology, he said, has not significantly changed the company’s operating procedures or its transactions with customers. Instead of bar code tags, document storage cartons at Brampton facility will now have RFID tags affixed to them.

Each scan- and there are five done in a single pass - by the specially-designed RFID reader validates that the carton is sitting where it should be. All this occurs without visual or manual contact with the cartons, O’Brien said.

Noting that customers would be the chief beneficiaries, he said this fact differentiates the Recall Canada rollout from RFID initiatives by many other companies.

Often RFID programs are “self-serving”, with companies using the technology to reduce their own costs, the Recall Canada executive said. The drivers for the Recall project, he said, are different. “It’s not that we needed some more hi-tech toys, or to find a way to raise prices and lower our labour costs – that’s not it at all.”

Recall Canada’s objective in deploying this technology, he said, was to enhance the inventory audit process, and do it without driving up customer costs significantly.

He said the project was also aimed at helping customers meet regulatory and compliance requirements within their specific sectors.