London-based retailer Marks & Spencer is piloting an
item-level radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking system at
its High Wycombe, England, store.
Marks & Spencer is using RFID tags to track men's wear,
taking inventory with mobile RFID readers. The goal is to reduce
safety stock and improve order forecasts for the more than 350
million garments it moves through its stores every year.
Paxar Corp., White Plains, N.Y., is supplying the tags, which use
chips from Swatch subsidiary EM Microelectronic, Switzerland. The
64-bit, 868MHz UHF tags are encoded with a unique identifier
associated with a catalog number. UK integrator Intellident Ltd.,
Manchester, England, which orchestrated the retailer's successful
frozen food RFID tracking system, is providing the scanner
technology.
According to Marks & Spencer spokesperson Liz Freeborn, the
company will tag 10,000 men's suits, shirts and ties for the
four-week trial, at a cost of around 30 pence per tag. Items will be
tagged at the distribution center prior to delivery to the store,
and scanned by store staff using custom-built, hand-held readers.
Both the mobile readers and the portal readers at the distribution
center were provided by SAMSys Technologies Inc.
Freeborn says an implementation schedule won't be established
until results of the trial are analyzed. The garment tracking
application was first announced in April. Marks & Spencer
received funding from the UK Department of Trade and Industry for
the pilot.
Freeborn also confirmed that the company had consulted with
consumer advocacy group CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering) before starting the pilot. CASPIAN
has been lobbying against item-level RFID tagging all year, fearing
such technology could compromise consumer privacy.
Marks & Spencer seems to have taken these concerns to heart.
The tags in the trial are not sewn into garments and can easily be
removed at the point of sale. There will also be no active tag
reading during the store's hours of operation (inventory will be
taken in the evening), and tag data won't be linked to customer
information.
Marks & Spencer has already rolled out several million tags
in a system that tracks reusable trays of frozen food. That system,
which uses tags from Texas Instruments RFid, has reduced data
collection times by 83% at the distribution center, which has lead
to a 15% growth in distributed volume, per year. More than 100
suppliers are working with Marks & Spencer on this program,
which is one of the most successful RFID supply chain
implementations in the world.
A report from Boston-based AMR Research Inc. said Marks &
Spencer estimated it would save 19 million pounds in two years, and
possibly increase sales 1% through improved stock accuracy with the
garment tracking system. Freeborn, however, said that the company
has never released any specific figures.
"In fact, it is far too early to talk about savings," Freeborn
said. "We have only just started testing the technology to see
whether it actually works in the store environment."
http://www.intellident.co.uk/
http://www.marksandspencer.com/
http://www.paxar.com/
