Forester Research reported in 2015 that US online sales will grow to $334 billion by the end of the year and estimates these revenues will reach $480 billion by 2019. These are amazing numbers that merit attention but behind them lurks another growing statistic, one that keeps retailers awake at night – the growing number of e-commerce returns.  E-commerce returns require a costly, time intensive process to manage and grow with the growth of e-commerce sales.  

Some e-tailers, such as Zappos, have built their business and their reputations around returns.  They anticipate and plan for high return volumes as part of their business plan.  Handling so many individual items consumes extensive resources and significantly impacts operational efficiency, pricing, and profit.  Retailers and their service partners, third party logistics providers, are concerned with the rising number of returns and their associated costs. 

Traditional automation systems are very costly to implement for e-commerce returns and are not primarily designed to function at the item level. These systems often include tunnel scanner systems and sortation systems which are very expensive and are unable to handle individual products.  Because of this, most logistics operators rely on labor intensive manual processing with workers handling products, using handheld scanners to identify them. 

While e-commerce returns are in the spot light for high product returns, other applications similarly generate high numbers of product returns. Such an application is pre-stocked promotional displays. 

Manufacturers contract with retailers to receive display units pre-stocked with product. The displays are placed on the store floor for a time period.  At the end to the promotion the displays are returned and inventoried to analyze the sales by store and product.  Each display holds a large number of products when shipped out.  Depending on the success of the promotion, a large number of items may be returned with the display.  Both the promoter and the retailer depend on accuracy of the inventory to assure correct invoicing and payment.

Processing returns of individual retail items, as seen by e-commerce and pre-stocked promotional displays, is very similar to the checkout process at grocery retailers – individual are scanned by a cashier.  Technology developed for retail scanning has evolved and can be used cut the cost of item level returns.

Datalogic, the global leader in automatic identification technology developed he Jade™ X7 automated scanning portal to accelerate the grocery checkout process. Jade portals are the industry’s fastest automated checkout solution.  These devices allow shoppers to place items in any orientation onto a fast moving belt; each item is automatically identified at speeds significantly higher than a traditional manual checkout. Shoppers move through the checkout process much more quickly and smoothly.

Systems integrators worldwide quickly realized that Jade automated scanners had applications beyond the grocery checkout.  In the Netherlands Vierpool, a Certified Datalogic Business Partner, developed a complete solution using the Jade portal and software to more quickly process high volumes of inbound and outbound inventory.  Such a system was installed at Simon Loos for processing returns of pre-stocked promotional displays. 

Simon Loos is the warehousing and value added logistics supplier for the largest retailers in the Netherlands.  The company regularly works with retailers and executes promotions using pre-stocked displays.  When displays are removed from stores, employees at Simon Loos scan all the returned products.  Reports are is prepared based upon the data from the inventory.

The traditional method for handling returns was very labor intensive.  As many as seven staff members would be working at one station.  Presentation scanners and handheld scanners were used to individually scan items as they were unloaded from the displays.  Conveyors would transport the scanned items to the packaging area. The speed of the process was dictated by the speed of the manual scanning. To increase speed, more manpower would be added to scan more items per minute. 

Vierpool automated the process at Simon Loos using the Jade automated scanning portal.  A Jade scanner was placed at the start of the process providing much faster scanning of items.  Now a single employee places Items are placed onto a fast moving belt.  The items pass through the Jade system and they are identified as speed significantly faster than manual scanning. The items continue to the next station where they are re-packaged.  The structure of the work space is significantly altered to creating a much more efficient use of space.

The Jade portal eliminated the manual scanning resources. Instead these resources were reallocated to repackaging or placed elsewhere in the facility.  The impact of the automated portal was significant.    The logistics operation tripled its productivity and better optimized their personnel. A first read performance above 99% delivers very high throughput for the whole process.

The solution includes a user-friendly interface for operators and file sharing with parent administrative systems. Beyond the functionality to identify items, the system captures images of the items allowing annotated pictures of products for easier identification and inventory records.

The implementation of the Jade X7 automated scanner in the logistics environment has significantly improved the returns process productivity.  The system speed has been increased without the need to add resources.  The results are easy to quantify seen by a reduction in 3 full time employees (FTE) previously required for manual scanning. These resources are now allocated to other work.  The reduction in staff has resulted in a very fast return on investment (ROI).

Automation using the Jade portal at Simon Loos for processing returns of pre-stocked display item has caught the attention of global e-commerce companies. Jade systems are now being tested for processing e-commerce returns.  Other important uses for the Jade portal include pick-and-pack operations and omni-channel fulfillment. Jade technology is delivering automation to e-commerce, an industry experiencing exploding growth.