"Future Store" is now open for business in the town of Rheinberg, Germany. Drawing on a who's who list of technology giants from around the world, the store is being hailed as a model for how retailing will evolve, thanks to advances in inventory/supply chain management, which make full use of radio frequency identification (RFID) to keep the supply lines. (This week's announcement was presaged last year by Supply Chain NewsLink in an article, "'Smart Shelves' Demo'ed at SAPPHIRE; SAP, Escort Memory Systems, and Philips Form Alliance." dated June 13, which detailed plans for an RFID-enabled effort involving key industry leaders. Ed.)
Royal Phillips Electronics(Eindhoven, The Netherlands), is supplying RFID technology being used for data collection, with final assembly of the item-level tags carried out by Avery Dennison(Greensboro, NC). Philips' RFID I.Code facilitates item-level identification, including individual products in the Future Store, e.g., CDs, DVDs, and videos; these are tagged using an I.Code, SLI-based system that incorporates theft protection. The system, which operates at 13.56MHz at a range of up to 1.5 meters, is linked to RFID multi-media kiosks that enable customers to simply swipe a CD or DVD and preview the album or film they are considering purchasing.
Cosmetics and food products are also labeled and put on "smart shelves," providing real-time inventory and expiration-date control, assisting with the generation of sales data as well as the location of misplaced items. Philips' I.Code technology is also employed in the store's customer loyalty card, offering customers access to information and multi-media services around the store and at the point of sale.
Other innovations in Future Store include a small, easy-to-use computer as a "personal shopping assistant" for customers, an intelligent scale that "recognizes" fruit and vegetables, electronic shelf labeling, and an automatic self-check-out machine.
Partners in the initiative include Metro Group, billed as the world's fifth-largest retailer; Intel, the world's largest microprocessor manufacturer; and SAP (Walldorf, Germany), the world's leading provider of business software solutions. Another key participant in the project is Intermec Technologies Corp (Everett, WA), a major provider of RFID solutions. Intermec is providing Intermec Intellitag RFID readers for shipping/receiving and "back room" pallet- and case-tracking activities. Among the benefits of this technology is that multiple tags can be automatically read at once.
RFID-based systems are extremely accurate and do not require the manual scanning and visual line of sight requirements of a bar code-based inventory control system. The result is that the tags improve the ability to accurately track inventory as it moves to a store shelf while reducing labor and equipment costs.
In the Future Store project, RFID tags and Intermec Intellitag readers are being used to build a manifest of products on pallets. Each case is tagged with a special tag capable of being programmed at the manufacturer with a global trade identification number (GTIN) and a serial number. This information is then read as the tagged items pass through dock doors and at subsequent collection points to provide accurate shipment, plus back-store and front-store inventory levels. This data is then integrated into the project's SAP system.
SAP provided the necessary enterprise software to support the RFID data collection, linking low-level interfaces of RFID readers with various applications. Other services provided by SAP include RFID-based systems for tracking the flow of goods, RFID-based systems data systems that utilize SAP's Supply Chain Event Management and Business Intelligence solutions, and employee portal technology.
Approximately 30,000 consumer products such as Gillette razor blades and Kraft cheese are enrolled in the RFID in-store monitoring/tracking project, facilitating inventory movement and the avoidance of stock-outs. Procter & Gamble, another participant, has taken an active role in the development of smart shelves, which will track movement/sales of its Pantene shampoo. The smart shelf readers operate at 13.56 Mhz and are provided by Feig Electronic.
