Butters Plants & Flowers – Peaks in e-commerce under control through RFID technology

Butters successfully designs horticulture products for in-store sale and home delivery, to retailers including Marks & Spencer, J Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose, Interflora and B&Q.

Each year, Butters develops a range of new products consisting of for example a plant in an earthenware pot and a bottle of Champagne. These products are then offered under the brand name and sold through the e-commerce portals of Butters’ retail clients, mostly for home delivery as gifts for Valentine, Mother’s Day and Christmas. During these peaks, Butters deals with massive spikes in demand, seeing its workforce expand significantly with large numbers of temporary workers. Controlling progress and quality of the largely manual production and logistics processes of assembling, picking and packing the products for time-critical shipment across the UK is a key issue.

Qualitative or quantitative underperformance during a peak season can cost Butters a contract with a retailer for the coming season, even if the cause lies with the transport company and not with Butters. To increase operational control and protect itself from untrue quality claims, Butters implemented UHF RFID technology with the help of Mieloo & Alexander.

In the attached whitepaper you can read more about the implantation process of the UFH RFID technology.