NEWS If RFID vendors want to start shifting some chips, they could do worse than focus their efforts on supermarkets and grocery chains, according to new research, which found the food sector just can't wait to get its hands on the technology.
According to research from grocery think tank IGD, 68 per cent of food and grocery retailers think the technology will deliver benefits to the industry – including better tracking and greater efficiency in the supply chain - and only two per cent of them are in the dark about RFID.
The research shows that the grocers are enthusiastic about the technology because they believe it will mean cost savings across the industry. However, more than half said that currently the costs outweigh the benefits.
Adoption seems just a matter of time for the retailers, however – 65 per cent reckon the technology will be widespread in three to five years' time and 35 per cent plan to implement it themselves.
Supermarkets are certainly leading from the front in RFID adoption. The world's biggest supermarket chain, Wal-Mart, has mandated that all its suppliers have the technology in place by next year; Tesco is trialling the chips and Germany's Metro chain has an entire store researching uses of the tags.
A Metro spokesman told silicon.com that the technology would mean safer food because of heightened traceability and higher availability of products.
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1. Roger Huffadine
RFID will be fine so long as Supermarkets don't try to use it on "check yourself out" systems.
The opportunity for fraud is huge.
Concealed about my person [handbag if I were a lady] is a device for capturing the IDs of cheap items [which I shove to the back of the shelf]. The reason for pushing items to the back of the shelf is to ensure that if the checkout doesn't scan the serial number of that item before I get to the tills, otherwise the security check will catch me. Alternatively I could have my accomplice put them in a trolly which gets left in an isle when we check out. I actually fill my trolly with expensive items. When I check myself out I place my handbag near the RFID scanner and emit the product IDs in response to the interrogation pulses from the RFID scanner.
My bag is full of lovely 'expensive' food, the till rings up cans of beans, cheap detergents etc.
Whoopee £200 per visit and all those supermarkets to have a go at :-)
So back to the old security methods then, because whilst RFID gives out serial numbers in response to interrogation pulses there will always be a way of fooling it.
2. anonymous
I work for a smallish supplier to a number of large chains, and from experience I can tell you that this will come, and we will bear the cost. Already we are forced to use EDI systems that gain us little benefit, but cost us both financially and in administration. In some cases the EDI requirements are nice and simple so at least we get to use the same system for most of our customers, but in a few cases they want so much more than our business systems can provide the data for and so we are forced to use their 'proprietry' EDI package and effectively duplicate all our business functions - in these cases it is clearly a case of shifting the work from them to us, not reducing the work required. Unless you are big enough to afford proper integration, the work saving benefits of EDI are a myth - the same work is done, but now the supplier does both their own data entry, and separately they do the same data entry for the customer.
RFID will be the same, sooner or later one of the large players will just turn round and tell us when we are going to start tagging stuff - on a do it or don't deal with us basis. And I don't expect we'll get any more respurces in IT to deal with it either.