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Warehouses and distribution centers (DCs) face no shortage of logistical challenges when fulfilling orders and tracking inventory. A 2024 survey of warehouse managers found that inventory management is the top bottleneck in order fulfillment, with order picking and processing not far behind. But technology has been a boon for DC operations, with everything from RF-enabled picking technology, inventory scanners, and even piece-picking robots helping streamline the flow of products through the supply chain and onward to end customers.
These helpful technologies are often, however, all too easy to pocket.
Handheld barcode and RF scanners can be integrated into inventory management software to track how goods move throughout a facility and to help workers pick orders more accurately. They come at a wide variety of price points, depending on the features and ruggedness required. Grocery stores, for instance, will want a more user-friendly device for mobile grocery ordering, while warehouses may want a ruggedized device that can stand up to being dropped and can handle long-term use. A basic handheld scanner can cost between $50 and $200, but more complex or specialized devices can start at $1,000.
When these devices are broken, lost, or stolen, the warehouse or retailer not only loses the cost of the machine—it loses the productivity, insight, and efficiency that the scanners provide, says Brian Davidson, business development director for retail and distribution at Traka USA.
“Companies will lose a million dollars of devices a year through either internal theft, misplacement, damage, or just pure accidents,” he tells Security Management during ISC West. “These devices are needed to keep track of inventory, help the business flow; the operational processes to do what they need to do rely on a single device that goes missing. Now, all of a sudden, it starts to impact that person’s job, which then impacts the availability of items. It just has that snowball effect when losing this already expensive device—$1,000 or $2,000—then affects its daily operational efficiencies. It adds up.”
Unmanaged or unmonitored devices make easier targets for theft, he says, “especially when these employees who are getting paid $15 an hour realize that ‘I can just put one of these in my pocket and go sell it on eBay for $500.’”
Davidson cited a theft ring at a large grocery chain where an individual realized the resale opportunities for inventory scanners and systematically wiped out stores’ stock of devices for whole metropolitan areas before shipping them out of state to another operative who could repackage the devices and resell them overseas.
“There was some value proposition there, and obviously a stolen device is 100 percent profit until you get caught,” he says. “But there was enough reward for that risk for that guy to go through and steal those devices.”
Companies will lose a million dollars of devices a year through either internal theft, misplacement, damage, or just pure accidents.
Grocery stores are likely the biggest consumer-facing use cases of scanner technology, especially with the advent of buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) shopping. For retail workers to pick out the right groceries the customer requested, they use a scanner to pick items off the shelves, verify they are the right product, and add them to the cart.
“Well, if that device isn’t available, you can’t provide that service,” Davidson says. “Now you can’t generate that revenue. And with some of these larger retailers, these locations are sometimes getting 150 orders a day, and we know groceries aren’t cheap. Let’s just say you get lucky and it’s only $100 an order on average—well, there’s $15,000 of lost revenue. And then you multiply that by 100,000 stores, well, all of a sudden, that starts to add up very quickly when you don’t have those devices available.”
Davidson recommends investing in an inventory management system for those devices as well, especially if the system can include auditing, maintenance logs, and trackability. (Traka sells equipment lockers with auditing capabilities.)
Frequently, inventory scanners are left on chargers in open, employee-only areas. But if organizations individually lock scanners and other inventory devices into compartments with authorized access management, especially if the assets are RFID-tagged, managers can log who used a device and when, when the device was returned, and any maintenance requests or issues that the user might have noted.
The check-out system might take 10 seconds longer than pulling a device off a charger, but it improves security and auditability, Davidson says.
Organizations can also reduce the total number of devices needed because fewer go missing, service requests are logged in a timely fashion upon device return, and it’s clearer which devices are charged and ready for each shift based on usage, he adds.
If a warehouse is running a three-shift operation, for example, it can have two shifts’ worth of devices so that one set is always charging and ready for the next wave of employees. A device management process enables that efficiency and restricts users from picking up a device that isn’t ready to handle a full eight-hour shift.
“That allows you to go through and eliminate a third shift’s worth of devices,” Davidson says.
“It’s important to have that comprehensive, high-level discussion and help the end user realize that we don’t need as many scanners or devices as we originally thought,” he explains. “Because they took the time to dig deep, be transparent throughout the process, we can identify that maybe we only need 20 instead of 35 or 40 because we’re extending the device life—then it turns into a return on investment conversation, saving money in the long term.”
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email directly at [email protected].
