As I was making a last quick run through all the press releases that normally arrive in my inbox, I could not help but notice one issued from the North Pole. The contact person listed is Saint Nicholas.

And what to my wondering eyes did appear, but news that Santa Claus has successfully implemented an RFID pilot. The goal of the pilot was to connect electronic toys with the proper size and type of batteries, so that children would not be disappointed on Christmas morning.

Santa and RFID to help kids -- now THAT'S news!

Just days before his annual, around-the-world journey of wish fulfillment, Santa Clause has announced successful results of his pilot RFID program to improve the co-packing of batteries with electronic toys. As the variety of both electronic toys and batteries flowing through the massive North Pole Wish Fulfillment (NPWF) center have increased over recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for Santa's elves to correctly match batteries to toys. * * *

According to Mr. Clause, the Elves had few problems matching toys and batteries back when electronic toys accounted for just a small percentage of total SKU's, and most of these toys ran on one of four standard batteries. "It was pretty easy for the Elves to pick the batteries manually," said Mr. Clause. "Even when we did occasionally forget the batteries or include the wrong size, the impact on Christmas morning was smaller since the children received plenty of other, non-electronic toys." * * *

For the RFID pilot program, NPWF had battery vendors place EPC Gen-2 compliant licence plate tags on skids of batteries. NPWF installed mobile readers on the masts of forklifts and embedded Gen-2 location tags in the floor on the load side of the flow racks. When a skid of batteries is placed for loading onto the flow rack, NPWF's proprietary software checks the load and floor location reads and immediately notifies the forklift Elf if the placement is wrong. "We've seen a ninety percent reduction in slotting errors with the RFID system," claims Mr. Clause. "I am looking forward to rolling this out to additional gift lines next year."

Read the humorous press release over at RFID Soup:
SANTA IMPROVES WISH FULFILLMENT WITH RFID -- Pilot Program Yields Improvement in Battery Co-packing

Thanks, Bill, for sending this over and making me smile in the midst of all the holiday stress.

Merry Christmas to all, from the RFID Weblog.