Xterprise Announces Enhanced RFID XARM™ Application Server -- XAS

Building upon its leadership position in turn-key RFID “tagging” solutions, Xterprise has deployed its new release 2.0 XAS.

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) November 8, 2005 –– Xterprise Incorporated, an industry leading solutions provider and experts for the “RFID Enabled Supply Chain” announced today the release of its performance enhanced XARM™ Application Server (XAS) for RFID tagging solutions.

Xterprise has installed the Release 2.0 of its XAS in two of its latest deployments for two Fortune 500 CPG firms. In these deployments, enhancements to the application server are enabling production line throughput rates and more agile exception handling, even friendlier user interface and more comprehensive SAP integration than their Release 1.0 which was first deployed in 2004. In most cases, suppliers are choosing to install RFID infrastructure in response to retailer RFID compliance requirements that will drive further efficiency gains in retail supply chains. Wal-Mart and Best Buy have recently announced and increase of over 700% in number of stores that will be outfitted to read the RFID tags and for significant increase in number of suppliers being required to tag product.

Xterprise has found a key factor in the ability to place a high volume of RFID labels on cases, both for both automated picking lines and high speed production lines. One of the Fortune 500 CPG firm’s/Wal-Mart Tier 1 Supplier’s deployments is using the enhanced features in placing RFID labels on cases immediately after case erection on the production line.

Although placing RFID labels on cases in production lines is not new to Xterprise, the new software and hardware enhancements allows the customer to achieve higher throughput, both at case labeling and the often ignored palletization process, as well as easy migration to Gen 2 technology as it becomes available.

“When we began thinking through what enhancements our customers were asking us for in our XARM solutions, we chose to focus on increased performance and more exception management”, said Clint Tennill, Director of Development at Xterprise. “We are committed to our Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach as it lends itself to not only matching customer unique requirements and interfaces but also supporting the spectrum of changes that we have experienced in client deployments, from dealing with migration from Gen 1 to Gen 2 to dealing with transitions to new ERP and Supply Chain Systems.” Much of Xterprise’s XAS success is based on a library of workflow objects that they have built on top of Apriso’s FlexNet platform.

Xterprise stated that some of the requirements have come from not only its new and existing customers but also working closely with retailers such as Wal-Mart on providing the necessary RFID expertise in defining future requirements. These requirements focus on higher volume roll-outs for labeling products in production, as well as tagging data that can be used to reduce out of stocks. As Wal-Mart stated in its press release from October 14th, the retailer is seeing promising signs of benefit through the use of RFID in its supply chain and thus is planning on a 6x increase in number of suppliers participating in shipping tagged product in the next 15 months and a 7x increase in the number of stores outfitted with RFID equipment in that same period. These requirements translate into more suppliers having to tag quantities greater than 1,000,000 cases annually and, having outgrown a manual slap and ship approach, require either production packaging line integration (XARM 4000) or an automated tagging solution (XARM 3000).

“The geometric increase in capacity of tag and label placement requires a significant departure from most deployments of 2005. It requires a disciplined, more production minded approach to solution development,“ said Steve Hall, Senior Vice President of Sales for Xterprise. “Our team, which has one of the longest list of successful deployments in the industry, have looked beyond the manual tag placement approaches to develop this new enhanced family of scalable automated solutions.”

About Xterprise -- Xterprise Incorporated develops RFID supply chain solutions and has been chosen by the many of the world’s most respected supply chains and fastest growing companies as their RFID solution provider. Xterprise blends best practices, supply chain processes, material handling, system hardware and RFID Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application software, enterprise systems integration, data analytics, demand signaling applications and remote solution support.

Xterprise works with other RFID & Supply Chain industry leaders, including Alien Technology, Zebra Technology, Symbol, Apriso, Red Prairie, TrueDemand, DPI, Weber, and others. These technology vendors’ products are displayed in Xterprise’s 6,000 ft2 RFID Solution Center where their vertical market solutions are showcased.

Xterprise is headquartered in Carrollton, TX and currently serves customers in Asia, Europe and North America. For more information, visit www.xterprise.com or call 972-690-9460, ext. 300.

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