In an effort to improve supply chain efficiency, UK retailer Marks & Spencer is replacing the bar codes it uses for tracking 3.5 million reusable plastic trays with electronic radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.
In trials by Texas Instruments Inc.-which makes the Tag-it smart labels now being used by Marks & Spencer-the RFID tags reduced by 80% (from 29 seconds to five seconds) the time it took to read a stack of 25 multiple trays.
The RFID tags, used by Marks & Spencer to track the refrigerated foods used in its supply chain all the way from production to purchase, also give them two additional competitive advantages.
The capital cost of the system is one-tenth of the annual cost of using bar codes and the tags are the industry's "first fully ISO 15693-approved product," says Jim Hopwood, managing director of Intellident, a UK-based systems integrator that implemented the system and that specializes in data tracking using bar codes and smart labels.
"There aren't any standards for UHF [tags] at present," says David Hyslop, Texas Instruments RFID Systems' UK sales manager, adding that the Marks & Spencer system is the largest scale system of its type. European governments limit the amount of power available at the UHF frequency-making it unfeasible in Europe. "Lots of U.S. companies are into UHF, but it won't work here," he says.
The new system-which also includes a range of portable and fixed scanners to replace the existing bar code system used throughout the Marks & Spencer chain-can scan entire pallets filled with trays without direct line of sight.
More than 70% of Marks & Spencer's food business is in chilled fast foods, and the supply chain needs to be fast, particularly since the company introduced reusable plastic trays several years ago. "It will cut administrative costs and give us about an extra hour's leeway to have goods delivered" to our stores says Keith Mahoney, logistics controller at Marks & Spencer. "Electronic tagging will give us a leading-edge supply chain model for all our chilled produce."
