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The Incredible Power of RFID
Keith Mahoney
Food Logistics Controller, Marks & Spencer
Chris Izzard
Business Development Manager, GIST Limited
On Wednesday evening, Keith Mahoney, food logistics controller at Marks & Spencer and Chris Izzard, business development manager at GIST, delivered the opening keynote speech, Keynote: The Incredible Power of RFID in the Retail Supply Chain (1.7 MB). They keynote was presented in partnership with Retail Systems 2003/VICS Collaborative Commerce.
The two men explained that GIST has been a Marks & Spencer supply chain partner for more than 60 years. GIST delivers fresh produce to the retailer every day, and there was a need to provide greater accuracy in the pick and a need to speed goods through the supply chain to reduce spoilage and waist. They first looked at RFID in 1995, but it wasn't mature enough to be adopted.
In 2001, when Marks & Spencer was faced with having to replace trays measured in inches with metric units used elsewhere in the European Union, it decided to look at RFID again. It ran extensive trials last year and began deploying 13.56 MHz tags from Texas Instruments on more than 3 million reusable trays. The two said it was critical that you could write to the tags because the system can continue operating without interruption, even if GIST could not access information from M&S.
The two explained that phase 1 of the project focused on supplier to depot movements. Suppliers have tagged trays. They fill the trays with produce, write data related to the shipment and where it is supposed to go and send it on to the depot. The depot scans the information and can quickly direct it to the appropriate store. This stage of the deployment will be completed next March.
The next stage, to be completed by March 2005, will deal with picking items at the depot and tracking them to the store, and in 2005, Marks & Spencer will look at in-store systems. While Mahoney said the system had achieved the aims of improving visibility and order accuracy, he didn't know if it had actually cut cycle times because the company was unable to track cycle times before adopting RFID.
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| A tagged M&S tray |
The two men explained that GIST has been a Marks & Spencer supply chain partner for more than 60 years. GIST delivers fresh produce to the retailer every day, and there was a need to provide greater accuracy in the pick and a need to speed goods through the supply chain to reduce spoilage and waist. They first looked at RFID in 1995, but it wasn't mature enough to be adopted.
In 2001, when Marks & Spencer was faced with having to replace trays measured in inches with metric units used elsewhere in the European Union, it decided to look at RFID again. It ran extensive trials last year and began deploying 13.56 MHz tags from Texas Instruments on more than 3 million reusable trays. The two said it was critical that you could write to the tags because the system can continue operating without interruption, even if GIST could not access information from M&S.
The two explained that phase 1 of the project focused on supplier to depot movements. Suppliers have tagged trays. They fill the trays with produce, write data related to the shipment and where it is supposed to go and send it on to the depot. The depot scans the information and can quickly direct it to the appropriate store. This stage of the deployment will be completed next March.
The next stage, to be completed by March 2005, will deal with picking items at the depot and tracking them to the store, and in 2005, Marks & Spencer will look at in-store systems. While Mahoney said the system had achieved the aims of improving visibility and order accuracy, he didn't know if it had actually cut cycle times because the company was unable to track cycle times before adopting RFID.
Back to Main Event Report
