Checkpoint Systems Inc. has enhanced its radio-frequency identification encoding technology, while expanding its RFID tag portfolio for apparel brands and their retail partners. The new offering was designed to meet the needs of retailers and vendors that are scaling up their RFID initiatives, according to Per Levin, Checkpoint's worldwide president of merchandise visibility and apparel labeling. Checkpoint is now offering suppliers and retailers three ways in which to uniquely encode tags. High-speed bulk encoding enables the encoding at a distribution center of RFID tags applied onto multiple items in a single box at operational speed. Through an expansion of RFID service bureaus in Asia, Europe, Central America and North America, the vendor is allowing for the encoding of unique EPC numbers, printing of variable data on labels in the customer's own print shops, and shipment of the labels to suppliers' tagging locations worldwide. Finally, in-plant printing services allow apparel brands and closed-loop retailers to manage their tagging processes from remote locations that might lack reliable internet service. They can handle the entire process, including number serialization and tag printing, from those sites. All of the new products work in conjunction with Checkpoint's existing Open EPC Number Management Solution, a cloud-based software application.
