NEWS
An RFID trial in Tokyo's upmarket Ginza shopping district is pushing the boundaries of item-level tagging by using the track and trace tech to give new insights into consumers' shopping behaviour.
A selection of make-up items including blusher, eyeshadow and lipstick have been tagged with RFID chips, with tag readers installed both in consumers' homes and at make-up counters selling Clé de Peau Beauté and Shiseido brands in two department stores.
Consumers pick up the chipped 'slap', take it to an in-store reader connected to a PC and access product information and user testimonials from the terminals. The terminals can also show a user how a given product might look when applied when a chipped sample is waved over the reader.
Department store staff have been equipped with tablet PCs to call up users' purchasing history and offer them 'e-counselling' on which products they should buy.
'Virtual home environments' will also be set up to allow consumers to interact with the tagged goods as they might at home - using the tags to call up product information, for example.
As well as exploring how individual users respond to item-level tagging, retailers will look into supply-chain applications - including embedding testers with chips to forecast demand for products.
The trial is in conjunction with Fujitsu and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It will run until the middle of February under the snappy title of '2007 Field Trial for Improving Distribution and Logistics Efficiency through the Use of Electronic Tags'.
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1. Edwin Senjobe
RFID promisses great improvements and efficiency to companies in any supply-chain. Take up of RFID technology in the UK is slow and companies like Sainsbury would have saved themselves the IT and distribution. It is 2007 and the Supply Chain problems at Sainsbury’s are still on-going. They will take out the automated depot and supply chain systems that failed and led to shelves being empty. The depots are now to work with a more manual intervention. According to Rene Carayol, the IT-based transformation should have been backed by the board but there was a lot of delegation of responsibilities.
Throughout this long story of the Sainsbury’s Supply Chain project, did Sainsbury’s simulate its Supply Chain to identify areas for improvement? At a great cost they shelved an RFID project?!?! A lot of time and money have been spent on trying to improve the business’ Supply Chain, but it seems they projects are handled half-heartedly. 3D Simulation would have highlighted key failings and helped with solutions for improvement. RFID would have helped them locate where goods were not moving.
The Japanese experiment is a good opportunity for Sainsbury’s to take heed, learn, adopt and start seeing improvements in its supply chain.