Marks & Spencer is expanding a trial of radio
frequency identification tags on clothing from nine to 53 stores,
in preparation for a possible roll-out across the business. The
retailer said it would decide in June whether to move to a full
implementation.
James Stafford, head of clothing RFID at Marks & Spencer,
said, "We are four weeks into this trial. We need to run it long
enough to make sure we want it."
The retailer has more than 17 million RFID-tagged garments due
to go on sale in stores this spring, after developing a programme
with its manufacturers over the past three years to reach this
level of garment tagging. With the tags in place, employees are
starting to use handheld RFID readers to perform in-store stock
checks every week.
Stafford said, "The business case [for in-store RFID] is to
offer the sizes the customers want. We are using item-level RFID to
improve accuracy."
Nigel Montgomery, director of European research at AMR Research,
said that when Marks & Spencer began its RFID pilot there were
no suppliers that could offer IT consulting services around RFID
development. "Now TCS can offer end-to-end supply chain systems and
IBM has a demonstration centre," he said.
Montgomery said Marks & Spencer would now be researching
other uses of the technology, such as offering users of in-store
kiosks accessories to match RFID-tagged garments they pick up. He
said this technology was running in fashion house Prada's New York
store. A similar idea is being explored by Metro in Germany for its
Future Store.
Marks & Spencer was an early adopter of RFID in 2003. With
RFID in its infancy at the time, it had to develop prototypes of
much of the technology involved, including the world's first mobile
garment reader.
How it works: the technology behind Marks &
Spencer's RFID system
As reported in Computer Weekly last week, Marks & Spencer
has tagged 61% of the plastic pallets it uses to transport food
from its suppliers to its stores. Some 1.4 million RFID-tagged
pallets pass through the six distribution centres that it uses for
its food business every week.
Pallets are read at each of the distribution centres by
floor-to-ceiling RFID readers in the loading bays. Marks &
Spencer uses supplier Intellident's Visiongate Dynamic RFID Portals
to automate stock checking for both deliveries from suppliers and
new orders for stores.
The portals can read items travelling at up to 15kph. They work
with tags operating at different ultra-high frequencies, including
the 13.56MHz frequency that Marks & Spencer uses for its
passive tags.
BT Auto-ID Services, which provides the managed service for
Marks & Spencer's RFID implementation, said, "The RFID tags
provide detailed information on stock and allow Marks & Spencer
and its suppliers to read information six times faster, leading to
reduced wastage, extended production time and faster vehicle
turnaround.
"The use of recyclable plastic trays also saves around 30,000
tonnes of cardboard each year."
BT uses Generation 2 tags on the pallets, which replace the
first generation of RFID tags as defined by EPC Global, the
organisation that promotes RFID use around the world.
The benefit of Generation 2 tags is that they can be read at a
greater distance and with a higher accuracy rate than earlier tags.
They are also smaller, lighter and cheaper. The US retailer
Wal-Mart, which is undergoing the world's most widespread RFID
trial, expects to use only Generation 2 tags on goods from its 200
largest suppliers by the end of this summer.
Marks & Spencer's implementation of RFID technology in its
clothing business to measure stock availability works using
different technology. The clothing business uses tags that operate
at a different frequency from those in the food business. Clothing
uses the European specification of UHF tags while food uses a
proprietary specification.
In-store staff use Intellident's Bluetooth Retail Handheld
devices to read "intelligent labels" on garments including suits
and trousers. Shop assistants pull the trigger on the device as
they run it along the garments to be scanned.
The device sends each intelligent label's unique identification
number to Intellident's Mobile Store Reader base station over a
Bluetooth connection. This then connects over an in-store 802.11
wireless network.
BT Asset Intelligence provides the managed database, which
collects all the information transmitted by the readers. The data
is then passed from the BT Asset Intelligence service to Marks
& Spencer's head office applications.