Present+Use



Today most retailers are involved in mass merchandising and offer similar products, services and prices. Competitive advantage often relies on merchandising selection, availability, marketing, cross-selling, promotions, customer service, operational efficiency, and protection of both merchandising and store property. A promising technology for effecting gains on all of these dimensions is Radio Frequency identification (RFID) that promises to change the way business is conducted making the whole process much simpler and quicker.

Asset tracking Asset tracking is one of the most common uses of RFID. Companies can put RFID tags on assets that are lost or stolen often, that are underutilized or that are just hard to locate at the time they are needed. Just about every type of RFID system is used for asset management. For instance, Air Canada is saving millions of dollars each year by tracking food carts used at airports around the world. It not only loses fewer carts and spends less time and money taking inventory, it also is able to better manage the movement of carts so there are always carts at the airport catering stations that need them.

Manufacturing RFID has been used in manufacturing plants for more than a decade. It's used to track parts and work in process and to reduce defects, increase throughput and manage the production of different versions of the same product.

Supply Chain Management RFID technology has been used in closed loop supply chains or to automate parts of the supply chain within a company's control for years. A Procter & Gamble distribution facility in Spain used a 13.56 MHz system to increase throughput, reduce shipping errors and cut labor costs. As standards emerge, companies are increasingly turning to RFID to track shipments among supply chain partners.

Retailing Retailers such as Best Buy, Metro, Target, Tesco and Wal-Mart are in the forefront of RFID adoption. These retailers are currently focused on improving supply chain efficiency and making sure product is on the shelf when customers want to buy it. - In Store Stock Efficiency Overall, RFID is used to increase in-store efficiency. In the Metro Future Store (Supermarket in Germany), trolleys are tagged. Scanners at the door tell the manager how many trolleys are being used, and if the amount surpasses a limit, more checkout lines are opened. RFID also enable checkouts to be bypassed and replaced by automatically billing the consumers' credit card. An example would be Timex, as they are already selling RFID tagged watches that can debit credit cards.

- Consumer Information RFID could (potentially) be used to enable consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions. For example, consumers would use scanners that are attached to trolleys (Figure A.) that read product details [such as production methods, ingredients, cost of item...etc...] One example would be 'talking' containers that could be helpful especially for the visually impaired. Out of store applications are also possible, for example, if tags are retained on goods and consumers have the necessary scanners, the tags may be programmed with information such as washing, cooking or recycling information.

- Consumer safety RFID also aids in Product Traceability, allowing more effective recalls of unsafe products. Since Jan 2005, the European Union Legislation will require the traceability of food products at all stages of production, processing AND distribution.

Lace, Susanne. "Radio Frequency Identification Technology in Retail." __NCC__. 5 Feb. 2004. 14 Apr. 2008 <[|http://www.ncc.org.uk/nccpdf/poldocs/NCC051br_rfid.pdf>.]
 * Works cited:**

Radio Frequency Identification. http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/economic_growth_and_trade/info_technology/tech_series/SRARFIDBrief508ppt.pdf

"RFID: Automatic Identification Evolves." __DatamaxCorp__. 16 Apr. 2008 .

RFID for Retail. http://www.orizin.net/retail.shtml

"RFID Business Applications." RFID Journal. 17 Apr. 2008 <[|http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1334/4/129/>]