The RFID Revolution- Scan and Beyond with Liborio J.R Ayala

In episode 16 of Retail Checks and Balances, Kevin Spencer interviews Liborio JR Ayala to discuss the advancements in technology, specifically in barcoding and printers, and reflect on the changes they have witnessed throughout their career. Despite closing this chapter, Liborio admits to missing the fast-paced world of technology and looks forward to their next chapter. 

TIMESTAMPS

[00:02:25] Advanced Technology in Retail.

[00:05:35] Barcoding and its Capabilities.

[00:10:21] RFID Technology Evolution.

[00:12:37] The “Why” Approach to RFID.

[00:16:39] Why do I Need RFID?

In this episode, Kevin Spencer and Liborio JR Ayala explore the fascinating journey of retail technology, from the early days of batch scanners to the advanced RFID systems and intelligent scanners of today. Liborio discusses the incredible advancements in technology and how it has revolutionized the retail and hospitality industry.

Overall, the future of RFID is expected to involve the integration of AI, machine vision, and intelligent RFID, which will further enhance its capabilities and expand its applications across various industries. These advancements have the potential to revolutionize processes and workflows, leading to increased productivity, cost savings, and improved customer satisfaction.

QUOTES

• “RFID is really not that complicated. It is, I mean, for us, we've been in the industry, but if you start small and you work your way out, you're going to see that you're going to have a quick return on investment, generally three to six months in RFID.” - Liborio JR Ayala
• “That (RFID) put things in perspective because what you're saying as well, and what I got from that is that it buys you time to be much more productive, especially in manufacturing plants when you have shifts and stuff. And if you go even further than that, there are only 24 hours in a day. So it's not like you can add on more time to the day, but you want to maximize the productivity within a day.” - Kevin Spencer
• “The future of RFID is dynamic and it's driven by technological advances. You know, what the industry needs are, you know, evolving trends in connectivity and data processing. So all this stuff is going to eventually, it's going to get better.” - Liborio JR Ayala

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Kevin Spencer

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kspencer007/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinspencer007/

Liborio JR Ayala

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liborioayala/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liborachi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libo0817/

WEBSITE

Rod Plus Solutions: https://rodplussolutions.com/

Transcript

Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the bustling world of commerce and culinary delights to help you grow your business and win. Join us as we explore the fascinating stories, trends, and challenges that shape the retail and hospitality industry, from cozy corner cafes to sprawling shopping malls and everything in between. And now, here's your host, Kevin Spencer. 

Welcome, welcome. Retail Checks and Balances. Once again, we have an awesome guest today, Liborio JR Ayala. Is that correct? That is correct. I always call you JR. I mean, I've known you for at least 20 years, right? 

At least, at least 20 years. Yes. When my time's out there visiting Trinidad. Which was always a blast. 

Thank you so much. We're hospitable in that regard. I mean, on to your next chapter, you spent 30 years at a major manufacturer of backward scanners, mobility solutions, mobility printers, right? I mean, that's a lot of years of dedication. So tell me, how does it feel to close that chapter now? 

Yeah, it actually, it's pretty interesting because I actually miss it. I mean, I know we, you know, I closed out this chapter in my next chapter I'm still working on, but I do miss all the technology. You know, I've seen, you know, the growth in barcoding and printers. It's just amazing how much The technology has advanced since we first started, you know, when I first started this adventure. I mean, back then, you know, when we were doing, we had scanners back there, laser scanners, but they were batch, they were called batch scanners. And what we would do is, you know, we would scan product, but that printer or that scanner would actually hold the data, then you would drop it into a cradle and transfer that data over to, the pc or whatever you're connected to and then you can see as we file and do your excel files but we just amazing how much we've. We've we've gained on the technology so advanced now and then you know there's more to come i mean there's a lot more coming but definitely i do definitely miss the technology i'm a techie i just bought me a pair of the ray ban smart glasses and i love those things i mean you could just you can just you know record pictures it's just awesome i love technology. So hopefully I can still continue. 

You know, a friend of mine told me about that and he kind of sparked my interest and you just brought it up. So is it that something is telling me I need to get? That's funny. 

Yeah, they work. I was amazed. I mean, I was out on a trip in Mexico and I took him with me and I did a couple of lives with the sunglasses and people see your perspective, you know, see the world through your eyes because you're wearing these sunglasses, you're wearing these glasses. And you can hear everything through the speakers that are right by your ears. It's pretty intense, pretty interesting technology. The other nice thing about these glasses is you can actually make them prescription glasses. Or you can do like clear transition, so you can take them to a lens crafter and they actually put, if you need glasses or you use glasses, you can pop those on there as well and kind of even enhance that use of the smart glasses. But yeah, I love technology and I hope to stick around for a few more years in the technology, whether it's barcoding and printers, whatever it is, but definitely technology is my favorite. 

I think your path or your career so far, I don't want to say your career has ended because I'm sure you have a bunch of new chapters and new things you want to do, but your path has really seen the evolution of retail, hospitality. Tell us more about that journey and how amazing that is to experience. 

That's actually a very good point there. I mean, I never really thought of all the different advances that we've done. I mean, when I first started working in the auto-ID, what we call auto-ID industry, I never thought I would get into barcoding. And I was like, what's this? What's a barcode? And you just kind of start analyzing and understanding And the company that I work with, you know, they, they were really good at teaching you and training you. And we had a lot of great partners out there that were already working in the technology, but we just needed to kind of enhance that, that, uh, I guess that the technology that we will, uh, and the solutions and stuff. So, but it was, it was great just to seeing all that from, from all those trends, like I mentioned earlier, you know, we had the batch mode and now, you know, we're doing into. It's the barcode scanning. We've got all these intelligence scanners. There's much more coming in the future. We have RFID, you know, so the radio frequency identification. There's so much going on right now. So it is, it was, it is, or I don't want to say was, like you said, but it is a pleasant journey. It was a pleasant journey going, uh, be all this and be a part of it. It's very, very, very, very interesting and very exciting. Really, really exciting. When I talk about it. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, I've gone, I've been to a couple of parties and stuff. And, you know, I meet, I meet different people and young people, old people. And, you know, we start talking about, you know, what do you do for a living, jobs. And so I start talking about barcoding because I know it. And I talk about printing and how it all works and everything. And they're like, wow, I didn't know barcoding could do all this, you know, and I didn't, you know, I thought it was just one barcode. And I mean, you know, you just start getting into the, all the details of two dimensional and linear, and you start talking about all the different barcodes that are out there that people that are not, Oh, I only know the QR code. And I, you know, I know what it does, but they don't understand the whole concept. So you start getting into all that. It's just amazing. People are just like. you know, they're dumbfounded. They just don't believe that we do so much. But very interesting. Very interesting. I'm sorry to mean to cut you off. 

No, no, no. This is your fucking time. So don't worry about that. At the end of the day, I was going to actually elaborate and say that container, I would say that's the container of success that you own. And you're going to take that container, open it up and put it into a bigger container, which I believe is your next step. program or challenge that you want to take on for the world. That is correct. Let's talk a minute about, you know, what would you say would be your greatest achievements in your career itself? 

My greatest achievement? Wow. That is quite a large Yeah. No, no, no. There's a lot. I mean, there's, there's so much, I mean, you know what I got to say that I think, you know, I'm, I'm a descendant. My, my descendancy is my nationality is Puerto Rican. My parents are Puerto Rican. And, you know, I was born and raised in Chicago and my Spanish was horrible. My Spanish was horrible. I mean, even when I, when I started working in Latin America, a lot of the emails, a lot of the folks that I, you know, interacted with was all in Spanish. Right. So I think my biggest achievement was learning the Spanish language. I didn't have to go to school. I didn't have to take any classes. I mean, just, just being there with the partners and getting all the, you know, the, the emails and all this, you know, the information and, you know, manuals, I had to read manuals in Spanish. I mean, it was like, it was dumbfounded. It was just crazy because my, my Spanish improved tremendously. I mean, when I first started people still, you know, they still remember me and say, I remember when you almost didn't speak any Spanish and you You're doing a presentation and you say the wrong words and stuff, but now I feel very, very confident with my Spanish. Before when I first started, it was bad, it was very bad. I think that's one of my biggest achievements is learning all the Spanish that I've learned. I can read it, I can write it, I can comprehend it. It's really nice. It's really, really nice achievement, I think. One of my top achievements there. 

I've known you for 20 years and I have never known that story. So this is great. I mean, it's nice. 

Well, you know, we've always spoken in English, right? 

Correct. To be honest, when I first met you, you know, you talked that you were from Chicago and, you know, that was, I didn't even know you were Latino until you said, I'm from Puerto Rico. And I said, okay, but, you know, you already was speaking Spanish around people. And when we, we got it for any networking or training and stuff like that. you know, going back. 

So, yeah, that I think would be my top, my top, top achievement. And then everything else is pretty much learning all the technology. I never thought I would get into barcoding. I just love the, I love the industry. I love, I love, you know, all the, I guess, all the partners, all the commodity, all the, I guess, the, the, what do you call it? It's the, yeah, I lost the train of thought there. You know, the people that I made, the friends, The reputation that I have in Latin America, folks, you know, they know who I am. You know, they hear Laborio or JR and they know who I am. So I think that's the other thing is just I have a really good reputation in Latin America when it comes to auto identification and not just with the company I was working for, but for other competitors, for all of our competitors and stuff. So I think that's the second one is just the reputation that I've had. So, you know, on that note, my goal is to try to do the same thing that I did in Latin America. Try to do it in North America. I want to migrate to North America and kind of do the same. And try to get that same, uh, I guess the exposure in North America. So yeah, I'm currently, that's what I'm working on right now is trying to get something in North America and there's quite a few out there, but I just, I gotta take my time. And right now the holidays, it's just been a little, been a little crazy, but otherwise, yeah, that, that would be my, my go-to or my goal to get, uh, get into North America. 

You spoke about RFID and I wanna, I mean, that's something that it's on everybody's mind. I mean, me in the industry, I've seen the technology, but I've not seen much of the technology implemented. I mean, just as from what you hear, I mean, it's not something that's really visible from the sense of you walk into a store or you walk into anywhere, a warehouse or and you see RFID existing, unless you are into the technology, you know. So tell me about where you see RFID starting and how it's evolving, you know, where it's going to go, because it's, it's, it's kind of like if you compare it to AI, right? So RFID is really a big, big, big deal. So tell me about that. 

So RFID has been around for a while and, you know, one of the, one of the, I guess one of the Top things of RFID when it first was launched was the cost. RFID is very expensive. Back then, it's declined. The cost of RFID has actually has lowered. The tags are a lot less cheaper, and there's so much competition out there. So yeah, RFID is definitely going to be around for a while. And the future of RFID, you mentioned a couple of them, the AI. We've got the AI coming up and then we've got machine vision. We've got a lot more, a little bit more intelligent RFID now that's coming. That's the future of RFID, which is, I call it the intelligent RFID version. But when we talk about RFID, and that's one of the things that I'm glad you mentioned it because when I do these sessions and when we were doing sessions over in Latin America, visiting tests and visiting customers talking about RFID, I always like to approach RFID is I like to use the term the why approach. I call it the why approach. Why RFID? So when you start getting into RFID, you know, there's there's several components when it comes to RFID and a lot of people understand the concept. Like you said, you see it working and everything else. But when you take the why approach to RFID, I think it'll help you kind of define a solution if you need it or if you don't need it. So when I talk about the why approach is, of course, why do I need RFID? We need to look at why RFID. I need to make my processes more efficient, more automated. I need to get real-time visibility. Everybody knows that part. So once you have that why, then what you need to do is I call it, you do a drill down or you do a breakdown of why you need that RFID. So when I talk about the breakdown, for example, let's do one of the benefits of RFID is customer satisfaction or customer expectation. Um, so in RFID, when you don't use RFID, right, when you're, you're, you're picking an order for a customer and you don't have RFID and the picker puts the wrong item, can't find the item, you can't find the item, you can't locate it because he doesn't have RFID. So what you, when you talk about drilling down, take a look at all the costs associated when you don't use RFID. So how much time did it take that picker to find that product or how many pickers did you use to locate that product? Multiply that by hourly wages or whatever but what you're trying to do is define. How much money are you losing when you don't use rfid because again in the beginning rfid is very expensive you have to justify the cost of. Having rfid and not having rfid so. You have to look at, okay, so that operator, the picker, couldn't find the product. It took him an hour to find it. Or the picker picked the wrong product, shipped it to the customer. The customer got the wrong product. He was expecting something else. He needed it right away. So how much did it cost or how much is it going to cost you to send that customer, expedite the correct product to that customer, right? And then to ship that product that you shipped incorrectly to that customer, ship it back to you. When I talk about drill down or basically drill down is you look at all the costs associated when you don't use RFID. All the errors that happen when you don't use RFID. Then you take that cost and you can more likely for sure justify the cost of implementing RFID. But you have to really look at the whole picture. I don't know if I'm making sense. 

You're making perfect sense. 

So once you have that data, once you have that information of how much the cost of not having RFID is costing you. So you can implement RFID, then you have some options. You can either go large. The larger the deployment, the more cost it's going to be. And in RFID, you don't have to go large all the time. You can go in small increments. You can do a small deployment in an area where perhaps there's high-value items. You want to monitor or manage or have that real-time visibility. in a small area, I don't know, wine, bottles of wine, high cost value, right? Laptops, I've seen shoes that cost like thousands of dollars. So you want an area where it's high value area and start small. You don't have to start big. Or another option is you have an area where it's huge run rate. There's stuff running all the time through that area, constantly running, but people lose stuff. They're shipping double items, not shipping the right items. So you've got choices to pick an RFID. So once you have that narrowed down, once you have the value of how much money you're losing when you don't use RFID, then pick your battles. You can do high value items or run rate items or run rate areas. And then another nice thing about RFID is that even though you're starting small, you can expand on RFID. You can add more readers. You can add more antennas and just grow depending on everybody's needs. So many different verticals out there that we can use RFID in, so many different areas. Once you have that, once you have that narrowed down, then if you feel, hey, you know what, I'm actually, I'm making money here because, you know, I'm three months down the road, I'm about my ROI back. So, you know, it's just sitting down and kind of doing that breakdown. But yeah, I get it. Why I need RFID? Perfect. but then do the breakdown so that you can pull that revenue out of the revenue loss and then implement it in an RFID solution. And once you have that, RFID is really not that complicated. It is, I mean, for us, we've been in the industry, but if you start small and you work your way out, you're going to see that you're going to have a quick return on investment, generally three to six months in RFID. So RFID is a very adamant or very important technology that is going to be around for a while. I mean, so yeah, that's pretty much all I had. I don't know if that made any sense, but. 

I mean, that put things in perspective because what you're saying as well, and what I got from that is that. it buys you time to be much more productive, especially in manufacturing plants when you have shifts and stuff. And if you go even further than that, there's only 24 hours in a day. So it's not like you can add on more time to the day, but you want to maximize the productivity within a day. So I think that's a magnificent feat to be part of, you know? 

Exactly. And, you know, the future of RFID is dynamic and it's driven by technological advances. You know, what the industry needs are, you know, evolving trends in connectivity and data processing. So all this stuff is going to eventually, it's going to get better. And in time, you know, the cost is also going to drop. You know, you see it every day, more and more competitors out there with RFID. So it's definitely going to be something that's going to be in the future and it's going to continue growing. So yeah, that's my bid on RFID. 

Perfect. I mean, I, I'm sure everybody's going to appreciate that explanation and the, the, the, the passion that you drove, you know, explaining that, um, has moved me as well. Um, but you know, I want to talk about, um, how do you see your next journey or your next step in your path? Are you seeing RFID as that major in terms of where you see your next path on the road? Or as I would like to tell people, is that your path to glory, you know, what's next? 

There's a lot. There's actually a lot going on. You know, RFID, I've always loved RFID. I love the technology. And if I could find a I've actually found a couple of companies that offer RFID solutions. And I've, you know, submitted a couple of applications to see if they take me on or at least get an interview. But the other thing is there's a lot going, there's a lot of buzz going on with e-commerce, a lot of stuff with, you know, passive income, where you can do stuff online, you know, in retail stores. And folks are, you know, they're making some pretty decent cash flow with just stuff, e-commerce online. So, you know, I'm looking at that, checking out some of the some of the stuff we have out there with the e-commerce and, you know, like Shopify, Shopify. 

You're getting my, you're getting my sickness. 

Yeah. Shopify and Amazon. So there's a lot going on there with, uh, with that. So I, I kind of looking at that option as well, but I'm definitely want to, I want to go into the RFID into what's coming in the future. I mean, barcode is always going to be around. Uh, but I think the next, the next step is the RFID, the, the, augmented reality, the AI, all that stuff is super interesting. And I just need to find a company that is headed that way and kind of hopefully I can join the team and go from there. But definitely RFID is going to be one of my top one bucket lists. Right. 

I call it that. And I guess after the holidays, I mean, you feel refreshed and ready to take on what's next, right? 

Correct. And companies have their budget all set up and everything. So I'm figuring like February, I started having some, some offers there in February, I hope crossing my fingers, but we'll, we'll see. How about you? How are you doing with RFID? I mean, I mean, you mentioned you do RFID, but are you, are you doing anything with RFID? 

We do a little bit in terms of printing, but it hasn't taken off in the retail or the warehousing space in our view. So, you know, we've been sitting back looking to see what's going to come. I mean, the cost has gone down, as you say, so we're hoping that within this year and We're heading to that NRF big show next week. So hoping to see what's available there. 

Palmer, I can't be there. Why not? You're right. Why not? Yeah, I could do that. You show up and you kind of get, yeah, you know what, that's not another one on my bucket list. 

NRF. We can talk more further about that, you know, but this is more about you. I mean, how was your Christmas? How was your holidays? 

Holidays, we actually spent it in Mexico. We went to visit the family out there in Mexico City. We were out there. We saw a couple of towns. We went out to visit a town called San Miguel Allenda, which is somewhere up in the northern part of Mexico City. We were out there. It's a small little town, cobblestone, super friendly people, very architectural, very, very old fashioned. It was a beautiful city. I really enjoyed it. A little cold. It was raining and well, it was drizzling and a little cold out there, but it was just a beautiful sight. I got to taste a tequila called Loco Tequila. I would recommend it if you can find it. Give it a shot. It's very good tequila. But yeah, we're tequila guys. We love drinking tequila. Nice. Yeah. 

I mean, yeah. Some of my best memories are in Mexico drinking tequila. Oh, yeah. That's a story for another day. 

Yeah, for another day. Some of them are for, yeah, you can't remember too. Some of those tourists can't remember because of the tequila. 

What about you? What about your hobbies? Tell me about your hobbies. 

Well, you know, what's funny is that, believe it or not, I love to cook. You know, I'm a really good cook. My mom was Puerto Rican and she taught me how to, you know, cook a lot of, a lot of the Puerto Rican food. So arroz con gandules, arroz con pollo, pate. I could just do everything. The sofrito, we make our sofrito. Mofongo. Carne guisada. Yeah, mofongo también, but that's a, that's a little, that's a little complicated, but yeah, you can do mofongo. It's not that complicated. It's okay. And cooking, I love to cook. It's very relaxing. You know, when I'm, you know, The world is, you know, freaking me out or whatever. And I just need to take a break. I like to cook. And, you know, I like the responses afterwards because generally I haven't gotten, you know, any bad reviews from my cooking. So I got to say, I cook pretty good. You know, we love karaoke. I love to sing karaoke. Everybody knows me as a karaoke guy. So, you know, and I was thinking about it the other day and I, you know, I've sung in like more than 20 countries, more than 20 places. So in Latin America and North America, I've sung everywhere. 

I remember that time in Puerto Rico. That's a long time ago. 

Oh yeah. And Trinidad too. Somebody took me to Trinidad and I sang out there. Yeah. 

But the first time I heard you sing was in Puerto Rico. 

Yeah. I heard you. You don't do too bad either. I heard you're a pretty good singer too. That's what I hear. Yeah. 

Puerto Rico was my debut on karaoke actually. 

They told me, if you ever quit from your job, you could be a good singer. That's, that's, that's it. Yeah. I don't know. But, and then my motorcycle, I love riding, you know, I, I love my, my motor, I love riding. I like to go on long rides on the, I get a Harley over here and I'll just, I'll just sit out there. And that's another, all of these kind of like help me relax a little bit, you know, it just gets you centered, right? 

More or less. 

Correct. Yeah. That's a good word. I like that centered. 

Yeah. 

I like that centered. 

So sometimes we get distracted by so much things around us in society. You know, we really need to, to detach and get centered to the point to even do anything that we want to do from a personal perspective and even from a business perspective. Exactly. Totally agree. Totally. What about family? Let's hear about your family. 

Well, we're lonely nesters. So, uh, my kids all moved out. They got married. My son, my oldest son is, uh, yeah. What do they call them? Lonely nesters or what do they call it? Yeah. Lonely nester. Yeah. It's just a, well, my son, my oldest son, he's a, he's a firefighter. Right. The firefighter up in Palm Beach, in the Palm Beach area. And then my daughter's like a customer service rep, some company here locally and stuff, but they're, they're fine. They're doing great. And it's the, it's just me, the wife and the dogs. Oh, and we got a, we got a cockatoo, a cockatoo, a cockatoo, big white white and yellow cockatoo, which is the big ones are about this big. He's got a little umbrella with a little yellow in there. It's her name is Jules and Julia Jules. And yeah, that's pretty much it. We just kind of chill out. And you've seen the back. You've seen on Facebook or on the net. Back there. Project. That's where I'll hang out. Yeah. Oh, it's done. It's not back there. Yeah, she's done. I got a bar back there. I've got Tiki's. I got televisions back there. I'll sit back there and get me a nice cigar and add me a little whiskey there. And I'm happy. You know, that's another, that's another gateway right there. It's just sitting there chilling out for a few hours. Cause you know, a good cigar lasts you about three hours. You can sit there and smoke a good cigar for like three hours. Yeah. And you're sipping on a little whiskey and stuff or, you know, tequila in your case, if you want to fill it. But, uh, yeah, that's, uh, that's, so everything is, it's good. It's hanging in there. We're, we're doing well. I hope that 2024 is going to be even better. 

I hope I can, I can visit soon and experience that. 

I'd like that. Okay. I'd like that. Yeah, definitely. 

The famous JR. Thank you so much for being a guest. I think this has been very enlightening and I hope we can do much more. I mean, I think this is not, the one and only. I think you have a very brilliant mind that you can share with all of the listeners and I hope we can do this again very soon. 

Agreed. Thank you. I'm super excited. Thank you for having me. Really, really appreciate it, Kevin. Really appreciate it. 

You have a great 2024, okay? Thank you so much. Relationships are essential for me. 

Thank you. Have a good one. Peace out, everybody. 

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts, so we'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Until next time, friends.