Famous UK High Street retail chain, Marks & Spencer, has switched to 'electronic tagging' to track over three million trays of chilled food in its supply chain - to reduce costs and speed up operations.
In probably the largest switch to low-cost electronic smart labels anywhere in the world, Marks & Spencer chose an electronic tagging system from Intellident that uses Texas Instruments' RFID tags to replace bar codes for tracking some 3,5 million re-useable trays, plus the associated dollies and roll cages used throughout its chilled food supply chain.
During extensive trials, the tags reduced the time taken to 'read' a stack of multiple trays by some 80%, compared with bar coding. A complete dolly with over 25 trays can be scanned in a single pass through a portal in just 5 s with high accuracy and reliability - compared with 29 s for conventional bar code scanning.
According to Intellident's MD, Jim Hopwood, "This is probably the largest ever supply chain application for RFID anywhere in the world. For this application, international standards were important and we chose TI's Tag-it smart labels because TI has led the way with the industry's first fully ISO 15693 approved products and it could provide the high level of support we were looking for".
Speaking for Texas Instruments RFID Systems, David Hyslop, UK sales manager said: "This is a very significant order win not just for Intellident and Texas Instruments but also for the RFID industry in general and the ISO 15693 industry standard. We have been a strong supporter of ISO 15693 and our ability to meet this standard was key to our success in helping Intellident win this major order".
The new system being supplied by UK systems integrator Intellident is part of a three year programme that includes equipping around 3,5 million crates and associated handling equipment with high speed, nonline of sight RFID tags plus portable and fixed multiscanners/portals to replace the existing bar code system currently used throughout Marks & Spencer's operations. Intellident also designed special multitag reading portals that can read complete pallet loads, dollies and stacked roll cages extremely quickly and efficiently in a fraction of the time it takes with conventional scanning - all without direct line of sight.
Marks & Spencer expects a fast payback period - the system's estimated capital cost is less than a tenth of the annual cost using barcodes.
Advantages of the RFID system include faster scanning and data capture with the ability to scan complete dollies with multiple trays in a single pass in only 5 s, increased scanning accuracy, lower labelling costs as the electronic tags are re-useable and updateable, plus faster more efficient data capture and communication throughout the entire supply chain. The electronic tags are re-useable and their fixed costs can be spread over a long period unlike bar code systems where labelling costs are continuous and substantial.
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