Zimmer Ohio, a branch of Zimmer Holdings, builds and fulfills the surgery cases that hospitals and surgery centers depend on — sets of devices, implants, and instrument trays assembled to the exact specification of each individual procedure. Getting those cases right is non-negotiable: a missing, extra, or expired instrument isn’t a paperwork error, it’s a problem in an operating room. For years, accuracy rested entirely on a trained employee visually inspecting every order and every tray by hand — on the way out and again on return. It worked, but it was slow, expensive, and capped by the limits of human attention. RES set out to change that with RFID instrument tray tracking.

The challenge

  • Every surgery case and instrument tray was assembled, inspected, and verified manually — on exit and again on return — which was labor-intensive and left room for inaccurate cases to reach customers.
  • The inspection demanded deep, specialized knowledge: an employee had to know the correct contents of every tray type to catch a missing, extra, or expired instrument. Building that expertise cost the company significant time and money.

How the RFID instrument tray tracking system works

RES addressed the accuracy problem with its AIMS software, an RFID scanning portal, and a custom scale system working together.

Surgery request forms load into AIMS directly from Zimmer’s scheduling software, so the system already knows exactly what each case should contain. A surgery case is then rolled into a large RFID portal, where it is scanned and compared in seconds against its corresponding surgery list. Within moments, the inventory specialist is alerted to any missing, expired, or extra items — eliminating case discrepancies before anything ships.

RES took accuracy a step further with a scale-based verification station. Each verified instrument tray is fitted with its own unique RFID tag. Placed on the scale, the tray is weighed, photographed, and read by AIMS in a single step. If the weight matches, the screen flashes “pass” in green; if it’s off, “fail” appears in red, and the photo gives the specialist an exact visual reference to find and correct the discrepancy. The result is a fast, repeatable check that doesn’t depend on memorizing the contents of every tray type.

The results

  • Surgery-case accuracy reached 100%, which in turn raised product inventory accuracy on the shelves.
  • Inspection accuracy moved from 98% under manual checks to a level nearing Six Sigma.
  • ROI was measured in weeks, not months.
  • The system saved roughly three hours per inventory specialist per day — a 37% productivity gain — by removing non-value-added inspection work from the fulfillment process.

“RES provided us with a solution that took us from 98% accuracy with manual inspections to one nearing Six Sigma. And, we were able to remove much of the non-value added work from our fulfillment processes. With the implementation of RES’s end-to-end solution, our ROI was achieved in record time.”

— John C. Reese, PMP, Zimmer Ohio

The takeaway

This is what item-level RFID delivers in a high-stakes environment: verified accuracy, far less manual labor, and a return that shows up fast. The same approach underpins RES’s RFID healthcare inventory management and RFID asset tracking solutions. To see what it could do in your operation, talk to an RES RFID engineer.