The MetaFiTM RFID Application Service enables real-time management of field-based inventory, assets, and employees allowing manufacturers and service providers to increase revenue, productivity and compliance. MetaFi leverages RFID and wireless technologies to provide the means to automatically collect, analyze, and act on real-time data from mobile field representatives and remotely located smart-containers including cabinets, totes, and shelves.
Overview
MetaFi is a turn-key hosted application that enables real-time management of mobile inventory, assets, and employees allowing manufacturers and service providers to increase revenue, efficiencies, and compliance. While much of the attention in the RFID market has focused on middleware used to reduce supply chain costs – MetaFi is a purpose-built RFID application used to increase sales chain revenue and efficiencies. Designed for setup and use by line of business users, MetaFi facilitates rapid deployment, typically in days or weeks, and creates value for various functional groups due to its web-based, business-oriented dashboards and analytics. MetaFi is based on a mobile web services architecture and leverages RFID and wireless technologies that provide the means to automatically collect, analyze, and act on real-time data from mobile field representatives and remotely located smart-containers including cabinets, totes, and shelves. MetaFi also provides the same benefits to on-premises applications by leveraging WiFi or Ethernet connectivity to provide real-time data collection.
Benefits
Manufacturers and service providers currently struggle to gather accurate and timely data on field inventory and asset levels due to manual tracking methods inconsistently employed by time-constrained field representatives. MetaFi enables automated real-time inventory and asset visibility resulting in the following benefits across the organization:
Increased sales productivity / revenue
- More stock-ins
- Increase in effective sales coverage / capacity
Increased operational efficiency
- Decreased out-of-stocks / shrinkage
- Better forecasting accuracy
- Higher inventory turns
- Higher SLA attainment
Increased financial performance
- Less working capital
- Faster invoice-to-cash collection
- Fewer write-
Technical Components
MetaFi has been designed to collect information in real-time about specific entities in off-premises locations,either remote or mobile, as well on-premises locations. As such, it is comprised of the following
Click to view MetaFi Architecture
MetaFi Console: Web-based graphical user interface for administering, monitoring and analyzing data collected from mobile and fixed RFID readers. The Monitoring modules provides business dashboards that are user configurable allowing prioritization of the most important metrics, messages, and alerts. Summary-level as well as detailed information about inventory levels, product location, and employee activity is also provided. Intuitive filtering and search capabilities allow drill-down to specific products, locations, and employees. The tag commissioning process is managed via the Provisioning module while entities (both people and items), policies, events, and users are defined and managed in the Configuration module.
MetaFi Server: The engine of the MetaFi solution comprised of core web services (eg, policy service, event service, etc.), message bus, databases, and external XML-based interfaces. All of these components are consumed by the MetaFi Console as well as external 3rd-party applications such as ERP, Accounting, Inventory Management, POS, and other commercial or proprietary back-end systems.
MetaFi Agent: Serves as the smart edge of the solution to allow mobile or fixed readers to capture and act on inventory levels even when operating in a location lacking local network connectivity and/or when not connected to the MetaFi Server. The MetaFi Agent is essentially a lightweight version of the MetaFi Server designed to run on handhelds and readers as well as drive printers/encoders for tag provisioning.
RFID Tag and Reader Support: SkyeTek partners with 3rd-party manufacturers of RFID tags, fixed readers, handheld readers, and printers to meet the needs of a given MetaFi deployment. For smart-cabinets / -shelves / -containers, SkyeTek will work with customers to outfit fixtures with finished or embeddable RFID readers and antennas.
Mobile Phone / Smartphone / Handheld Support: The MetaFi Agent runs on devices that support Windows Mobile and Java Mobile Edition (aka J2ME).
Get Started Now
MetaFi’s web-based delivery and subscription model means organizations can get up and running in less than 30 days. SkyeTek Professional Services group is also available to review customer needs and architect corresponding RFID solutions that tie seamlessly with existing legacy systems. Contact SkyeTek today to realize the true potential of your sales organization and field service representatives.