Case Study: Brooks Running

Sensormatic Solutions’ RFID expertise delivers gains in Supply Chain Visibility and eliminates shipping errors at an athletic footwear and apparel leader’s primary U.S. distribution center.

Summary

Industry

Retail, Apparel, Sporting Goods

Benefits

100% accuracy of picked/packed items at the distribution center
RFID scanning is 26 times faster than manual bar code scanning
Real-time notifications enable immediate error identification
Automated shipping audit process reduces human error and overall costs
Reduction in chargebacks

About Brooks Running

Brooks Running creates market-leading performance running footwear, apparel, and accessories distributed worldwide. Since 1914, Brooks has been propelled by a never-ending curiosity with how humans move, pushing the limits of motion science, engineering, and technology to create gear that unlocks the power of energy and movement for everyone.

The Project

With decades of success as a market leader in performance running products, Brooks knew it was time to invest in an industry-leading solution that could ensure that items shipped matched items ordered every time — so they turned to the RFID experts at Sensormatic Solutions.

Sensormatic Solutions’ Professional Services team worked consultatively with Brooks’ leadership to scope, test, and implement an end-to-end inventory intelligence solution. That solution included Sensormatic’s TrueVUE Cloud, plus on-demand printing and encoding services that ensured items were RFID tagged with unique electronic product code (EPC) labels and APIs to connect seamlessly with Brooks’ warehouse management system (WMS).

The Challenge

To best meet its customers’ needs, Brooks sought to ensure that items shipped matched items ordered every time. Striving for 100% accuracy, the company was in search of an inventory intelligence system, with a quick implementation turn-around timeline.

retail store employee entering data into a device in the stock room of the store

The Solution

With thousands of orders being shipped and only a limited time to deploy the solution across the entire distribution center, Sensormatic Solutions quickly leveraged its RFID expertise to design and implement a system that reduced costs, delivered real-time notifications, and empowered the Brooks team to ship with 100% accuracy.

Now armed with a fully connected supply chain ecosystem that includes on-demand EPC printing, mobile RFID readers, and Supply Chain Visibility powered by TrueVUE Cloud, the Brooks team has a digital audit trail for every item shipped without the need for time-consuming (and often inaccurate) manual audits. Plus, use of mobile RFID readers eliminated the need to bring products to a dedicated workstation for tagging, reducing handling time and improving workflow.

“Use of RFID technology in distribution centers is increasing at a rapid pace, with high demand for Sensormatic Solutions’ RFID-powered TrueVUE Cloud distribution center solutions,” said Umesh Cooduvalli, business development executive at Sensormatic Solutions. “It eliminates errors during the packing phase to ensure accurate shipments, and it also provides an audit trail of each item shipped to customers for compliance.”

Ultimately, partnering with Sensormatic Solutions has enabled Brooks to ship faster and more accurately, reduce costs, and move toward endto-end inventory visibility throughout the picking/ packing and shipping processes.

“At Brooks, we started exploring RFID solutions over a year ago. After enabling source tagging, we deployed on-demand printing and encoding of RFID tags at our distribution center and the RFID-enabled audit station from Sensormatic Solutions. These distribution center use cases have proven to be highly efficient. The speed and accuracy, along with the data we capture for accurate shipments, have been amazing.”

Steve LeClerc, Director of Distribution, North America, at Brooks Running

The Results

100% of products shipped are tagged with RFID labels to ensure accuracy, traceability, and visibility
Substantial reduction in shipping errors, human errors, and overall costs
End-to-end inventory visibility and real-time notifications
Greater operational efficiency and full compliance with retail partner requirements
Reduction in chargebacks

About Johnson Controls

At Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI), we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet.

Building on a proud history of 140 years of innovation, we deliver the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through OpenBlue, our comprehensive digital offering.

Today, Johnson Controls offers the world`s largest portfolio of building technology and software as well as service solutions from some of the most trusted names in the industry.

Visit www.johnsoncontrols.com for more information and follow @johnsoncontrols on social platforms.

About Sensormatic Solutions

Sensormatic Solutions, the leading global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls, powers safe, secure and seamless retail experiences. For more than 60 years, the brand has been at the forefront of the industry’s fast-moving technology adoption, redefining retail operations on a global scale and turning insights into actions. Sensormatic Solutions delivers an interconnected ecosystem of loss prevention, inventory intelligence and traffic insight solutions, along with our services and partners to enable retailers worldwide to innovate and elevate with precision, connecting data-driven outcomes that shape retail’s future. Please visit Sensormatic Solutions or follow us on LinkedIn, X, and our YouTube channel.