About Aya Kitchens & Bath
Aya Kitchens & Bath is a Canadian manufacturer specializing in customized, mass-produced kitchen and bathroom cabinetry. Their model is ambitious: produce at the volume of a large-scale manufacturer while still allowing each customer to fully personalize their cabinet to unique specifications. Every cabinet is manufactured in-house from start to finish, with tens of thousands of individual parts moving through the facility every single day.
Industry: Custom Cabinet Manufacturing Location: Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada.
The Challenge
With such high production volumes and a distribution network spanning coast to coast to coast, Aya Kitchens & Bath faced a persistent and costly problem: cabinets were occasionally being loaded onto the wrong outbound trucks.
Before RFID, every cabinet was manually scanned by hand at the shipping dock. In a high-pressure, high-volume environment, human error was inevitable. A shipper might scan a cabinet correctly but then physically load it onto the wrong truck — or scan multiple items at once without accurately tracking which one went where. With trucks heading as far as the West Coast and the East Coast, a mislabeled shipment meant a customer would receive the wrong order or nothing at all.
The financial stakes were significant. Losing even a few cabinets per week — whether through misdirection or an inability to prove delivery — added up quickly in both direct costs and customer satisfaction.
Aya Kitchens & Bath had already attempted to address this through internally developed software controls, including green/red light indicators and audible alerts tied to barcode scans. However, the fundamental limitation remained: as long as a human was required to physically scan each item, the risk of error could never be fully eliminated.
Why RFID Canada
Aya Kitchens & Bath discovered RFID Canada while researching available RFID solutions. What set RFID Canada apart from other vendors was responsiveness and proximity.
Unlike other vendors who were slower to respond or based in the United States, the RFID Canada team — based in the Greater Toronto Area — was able to respond within the hour, visit the facility in person, and begin drawing up a tailored plan immediately.
“RFID Canada was very responsive. The team communicated and responded to our emails within an hour. They were more than willing to come down, take a look at our situation, and start drawing up a plan. Other companies were a bit slow, and a lot of them were in the States — so traveling over here was more of a hassle. It was a real benefit that RFID Canada was in the GTA area.” — Eric Wong, Process Engineer, Aya Kitchens & Bath.
The Solution
RFID Canada designed and deployed a UHF RFID tracking system at the finished goods and shipping area of Aya Kitchens & Bath’s facility. RFID labels were printed on-demand using integrated RFID label printers and applied directly to finished cabinet boxes at the point of completion — ensuring every unit entering the shipping area was tagged and traceable from the moment it left the production floor. Fixed UHF RFID readers with directional antennas were installed at key exit points to automatically capture cabinet movements as they passed through shipping doors — logging which cabinet exited through which door, at what time, and onto which truck. The combination of print-and-apply label generation with fixed reader infrastructure created a seamless, automated data capture loop requiring no manual scanning intervention.
Aya Kitchens & Bath’s in-house IT team integrated the RFID data feed directly into their own internal systems, enabling real-time cross-referencing of cabinet shipments against truck manifests.
The initial deployment required a second phase of optimization. After go-live, read accuracy was approximately 70%, which did not meet the required performance threshold. The RFID Canada team returned to the facility, reassessed the antenna configuration, and expanded coverage by installing additional antennas — bringing the system up to its current operating performance.
“The overall design was great — it was what we needed. Once we added more antennas, the system has been working great.” — Eric Wong, Process Engineer, Aya Kitchens & Bath.
Results
Since completing the second phase of deployment, the system has been operating at approximately 95% read accuracy — with the remaining variance attributed to third-party shipping partners and occasional handling practices outside of Aya Kitchens & Bath’s direct control.
Key outcomes include:
Shipping error visibility: Cabinets loaded onto the wrong truck are now logged automatically. Even when misdirection occurs due to human behavior, Aya Kitchens & Bath can immediately confirm which door a cabinet exited through, which truck was at that door, and which location received it — enabling swift resolution of disputes without bearing the cost of unnecessary remakes.
Documented cost recovery: Shortly after the second phase went live, the system helped confirm the delivery of 3 cabinets that had been disputed — preventing unnecessary remake costs in a single incident alone and providing clear audit evidence to resolve the claim immediately.
Scalable foundation for expansion: With the back-end deployment proven, Aya Kitchens & Bath is scaling RFID across the full facility — extending from finished goods tracking toward work-in-progress tracking across all production work cells. The architecture was designed from the outset to grow with the operation, allowing new read points, work cells, and locations to be added without rebuilding the core system. Associate locations that receive Aya Kitchens & Bath’s cabinets have also independently expressed interest in adopting compatible RFID systems for their own receiving operations — referrals that originated directly from their visible use of RFID labels on outbound shipments.
The Partnership
Aya Kitchens & Bath describes RFID Canada not as a vendor but as a true partner — a distinction credited not only to the quality of the technical solution delivered, but to the superior overall experience RFID Canada provides. From initial consultation through deployment, optimization, and ongoing support, the team’s commitment to top-notch quality and cost-efficient solutions has defined every stage of the engagement.
“When we have a problem and we reach out, the RFID Canada team replies really quickly and looks into it, working to figure out a solution. Over the years, once the system was stable, we haven’t had many issues — but when we did, they were there and they helped. That’s why I say RFID Canada is more like a partner than just a vendor that wants to sell you something.” — Eric Wong, Process Engineer, Aya Kitchens & Bath.
Looking Ahead
Aya Kitchens & Bath’s long-term vision reflects a commitment to operational excellence: full RFID integration across the entire facility — from raw material intake at the front of the production line all the way through to final shipment at the back. Their goal is nothing short of a fully connected, error-free manufacturing and distribution operation. The current deployment serves as the core foundation that will drive that broader expansion forward by stacking more use cases utilizing the same infrastructure.
