Metro Group, the world's third largest retailer, has held
the first public demonstration of the next generation of radio
frequency identification technology.
The technical standard, called EPC Generation 2 RFID, is said to be
more accurate than the one currently being used by retailers.
Experts believe it will be widely adopted by suppliers as the basis
for RFID systems that are expected to transform the way goods are
tracked along the supply chain.
Elsa Lion, an analyst at Ovum said, "These tags are far better than
current deployments."
She added that first-generation RFID tags were not resilient
enough. "There were a lot of failures with the tags and problems
with reader accuracy," she said.
Analyst firm Gartner said the EPC Generation 2 RFID standard marks
an improvement in performance and it expects it to be incorporated
by RFID suppliers.
Metro is one of the most high-profile early adopters of RFID tags,
alongside Tesco, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart. During the
Metro demonstration, Intermec Intellitag Gen 2 smart labels were
read by an RFID-enabled Intermec IF5 reader as a pallet of tagged
cases was processed.
The next step for the retailer will be to equip Metro's RFID
Innovation Centre with EPC Generation 2 RFID technology to test
system performance. The company also plans to update its Future
Store with EPC Generation 2 capabilities to test the technology
under real-life conditions.
Gerd Wolfram, executive project manager of the Metro Group Future
Store initiative, said the demonstration proved the viability of
the tag. "We wanted to ensure that our existing RFID systems would
seamlessly migrate forward to the ISO-based Gen 2 solution."
By the end of 2005, more than 100 Metro Group suppliers are
expected to migrate to EPC Generation 2 RFID technology for asset
tracking and inventory control.
The retailer, which has 2,300 stores in 30 countries, launched its
first RFID pilot project in November 2004. To date, more than
100,000 pallets have been read using Metro's RFID system.