- Customer
- Inhabitr Furniture Rentals
- Partner
- Zebra
- Use case
- Returnable items
- Solution
- InThing returnable asset visibility with Visium Mobile and the Visium API; Zebra handheld and fixed RFID readers, Zebra A5060 and A5010 antennas, RFID and GPS tags
~8,000
furniture items monitored through the Chicago warehouse
$18
per day per dock door
2023
deployed with Zebra RFID infrastructure
The challenge
Inhabitr uses AI to tailor furniture choices, designs and arrangements for rental customers. With thousands of units out on rental, it had to know whether the chosen furniture sets reached the right customer location — and whether they came back.
Inventory checks and searches in large warehouses were manual and paper-based. Auditing and reconciling inbound items was labor-intensive and incomplete, and mistakes caused re-runs between warehouses and customer sites that cost time and added transport emissions.
The solution
- All existing items were tagged and imported once into Visium — through the API, the web application or a mobile device; RFID tags also mark locations in the facility.
- Warehouse staff run periodic inventories with Visium Mobile on Zebra handheld readers.
- Inhabitr’s own systems create customer and work-order records in Visium through its API.
- At the dock door, every item staged for a work order is verified by RFID before loading; a display shows the loading process in real time so operators can correct exceptions.
- Staff can build containers and audit everything in a box as a single kit.
The results
Inhabitr significantly improved operational efficiency at a price point of $18 per day per dock door. Shipping and receiving validations are automated, preventing wrong shipments and reducing re-runs between warehouses and customer locations. Inventory audit records stay accurate, cycle-count changes are visible in real time, and missing items can be found by tag ID.