RFID JOURNAL
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RFID and Supply Chain Theft
Chris Adams
Chief Inspector, Police Scientific Development Branch, UK Government
The Police Scientific Development Branch is responsible for developing, procuring and promoting technology to assist law enforcement in the UK and Europe. Three years ago, the branch began the "Chipping of Goods" initiative in partnership with private industry. Chris Adams, chief inspector for the branch, delivered a lectured entitled Can RFID Eliminate Supply Chain and Retail Theft? (45 KB).
Adams said that the branch began the initiative based on three main hypotheses. The first was that there was an urgent need to reduce crime, which costs the UK government about $60 billion pounds a year. The second was that there was a need to make businesses more efficient. And the third was that RFID offered the opportunity to do both of those.
The main concept behind the branch's Chipping of Goods program was that the government and private industry would collaborate with private industry to see how RFID could both reduce theft and increase efficiency. "The aim was to have a true partnership, where we share the costs, the risks and the benefits," said Adams. "To do that, we had to put money into the equation."
The UK government funded eight projects and in each case worked with a consortium of companies. The government put in £5 million, and all of the companies combined contributed another £10 million. The plan was to track individual, high-value goods from the manufacturer, through the supply chain, to the stores.
To reduce crime, the police need to know whether an item was stolen, Adams said. They need proof of ownership, and they need an audit trail to show where goods have been and when in their lifecycle they were there. "If you look at our requirements, they are really no different from the requirements of people in the business world," he said. "That brings us back to our original thesis that these requirements can be achieved by RFID."
By tagging goods with RFID, the projects could reduce the opportunity for crime by knowing where the goods, where they should be and when they are arriving. Better tracking makes it more likely that a crime will be detected and that the perpetrator will be caught.
In choosing projects to fund, the branch had four criteria. It wanted to cover a range of product sectors (phones, laptops, boats, CDs and so on). It wanted to cover all parts of the supply chain. The projects had to be scalable, meaning the companies involved could potentially move beyond the pilot to implementation. And the projects had to be significant in terms of the size of the companies involved, or the impact on the supply chain or on the RFID industry. He then briefly described the eight projects funded.
Woolworths: In this project, Woolworths tracked goods from its distribution center to several stores. Adams didn't go into detail because the next presenter, Geoff O'Neill, was delivering a related case study on Woolworths use of RFID to reduce theft.
HPI and British Marine Federation: HPI is a database company that maintains a database of boats in the UK. The British Marine Federation represents about 80 percent of boat builders in the UK. For the project, low-frequency RFID transponders were built into the boats' structure during manufacturing. The transponder has a unique serial number that is stored in the HPI database. If the boat is stolen and recovered, the unique identifier can be matched to the history of ownership stored in the database.
Allied Domecq, De La Rue and Chep: Allied Domecq makes whiskey. RFID tags are too expensive to put on each bottle, so the distiller has combined technologies. Bottles are uniquely identified with a 2D bar code as they come off the production line. That bottle is associated with a case, which has a linear bar code, and the case is associated with a pallet. RFID tags are put on the pallets. With software, the company knows which bottle is in which case and which pallet that case is on. "Consequently, they can follow the trail of that bottle from the time it leaves the production line to the time it arrives in the supermarket," Adams said. "The police can use the 2D bar code on the bottle, check the database and get a full audit trail of where that bottle has been."
Argos: Agros is one of the largest UK retailers and the second largest in jewelry sales. The project focused on tracking high-value jewelry from a central warehouse to a number of secondary warehouses in England, Scotland and Ireland and then on to stores. Since you can't put tags on earrings or bracelets, the goods were picked and put in small plastic totes. The totes were sealed with a bar-coded ring-seal and put on roll cages. Passive tags were used to track the totes and active (battery-powered) tags were used on roll cages.
Unilever, Tibbett & Britten and Safeway: In this three-stage project, Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer products company, put passive RFID tags on six-packs of its Lynx deodorant at its manufacturing plant in Leeds. Tibbett & Britten, a distribution company, tracked the goods through its distribution center and on to Safeway stores in the UK (see Unilever Tracks Lynx with RFID). Safeway tracks the goods on a smart shelf in the store.
Dell Computer and British Telecom: At its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Dell Computer implants an RFID tag in its laptops in such a way that if the tag is removed the laptop is destroyed. For the project, the tagged laptops were supplied to one of Dell's major customers, British Telecom. BT buys 10,000 laptops a year from Dell. BT is developing security systems to use the tags for physical security within their facilities. So if a laptop is removed without authorization, an alarm at the door is sounded.
e.centre, EMI, Handleman and ASDA: In this project, coordinated by e-center, the UK arm of EAN-UCC, Handleman tagged CDs coming from EMI. Tags were put into jewel cases at Handleman's distribution center in the UK and then tracked to the back of one of ASDA's stores. ASDA is a major UK retail chain owned now by Wal-Mart. The project was also designed to track returns, which can be 10 percent of CD purchases (see The Key to Tracking Unique Items).
Tri-Mex, DHL and Nokia: Tri-Mex tracks high-value products at container and vehicle level using satellite technology. For this product, they worked with cell phone maker Nokia and DHL, the delivery company. In stage one, they tagged consignments of mobile phones in packs of five. The goods were tracked from a Nokia factory in Finland to a DHL hub, where they are flown to the UK and trucked to a distribution center. The aim of the project was to be able to track goods not just at transshipment points, but in transit (For more information, see Nokia Tests Cell Phone Tracking).
Adams showed a video promoting the Nokia project. In response to a question from the audience, he said that the projects didn't pursue prosecutions, but that the goal was to develop audit trails that could be used in court.
"To sum up, we expect to get some detailed learnings out of these demonstration projects, but we've already established some general principle," he said. "The first one is understand your requirements before you start. The second is the power of collaboration cannot be underestimated. And third, you have to view the whole system. You can't just focus on the RFID portion. And finally, don't underestimate the complexity of these projects."
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| Unilever tracked Lynx deoderate |
Adams said that the branch began the initiative based on three main hypotheses. The first was that there was an urgent need to reduce crime, which costs the UK government about $60 billion pounds a year. The second was that there was a need to make businesses more efficient. And the third was that RFID offered the opportunity to do both of those.
The main concept behind the branch's Chipping of Goods program was that the government and private industry would collaborate with private industry to see how RFID could both reduce theft and increase efficiency. "The aim was to have a true partnership, where we share the costs, the risks and the benefits," said Adams. "To do that, we had to put money into the equation."
The UK government funded eight projects and in each case worked with a consortium of companies. The government put in £5 million, and all of the companies combined contributed another £10 million. The plan was to track individual, high-value goods from the manufacturer, through the supply chain, to the stores.
To reduce crime, the police need to know whether an item was stolen, Adams said. They need proof of ownership, and they need an audit trail to show where goods have been and when in their lifecycle they were there. "If you look at our requirements, they are really no different from the requirements of people in the business world," he said. "That brings us back to our original thesis that these requirements can be achieved by RFID."
By tagging goods with RFID, the projects could reduce the opportunity for crime by knowing where the goods, where they should be and when they are arriving. Better tracking makes it more likely that a crime will be detected and that the perpetrator will be caught.
In choosing projects to fund, the branch had four criteria. It wanted to cover a range of product sectors (phones, laptops, boats, CDs and so on). It wanted to cover all parts of the supply chain. The projects had to be scalable, meaning the companies involved could potentially move beyond the pilot to implementation. And the projects had to be significant in terms of the size of the companies involved, or the impact on the supply chain or on the RFID industry. He then briefly described the eight projects funded.
Woolworths: In this project, Woolworths tracked goods from its distribution center to several stores. Adams didn't go into detail because the next presenter, Geoff O'Neill, was delivering a related case study on Woolworths use of RFID to reduce theft.
HPI and British Marine Federation: HPI is a database company that maintains a database of boats in the UK. The British Marine Federation represents about 80 percent of boat builders in the UK. For the project, low-frequency RFID transponders were built into the boats' structure during manufacturing. The transponder has a unique serial number that is stored in the HPI database. If the boat is stolen and recovered, the unique identifier can be matched to the history of ownership stored in the database.
Allied Domecq, De La Rue and Chep: Allied Domecq makes whiskey. RFID tags are too expensive to put on each bottle, so the distiller has combined technologies. Bottles are uniquely identified with a 2D bar code as they come off the production line. That bottle is associated with a case, which has a linear bar code, and the case is associated with a pallet. RFID tags are put on the pallets. With software, the company knows which bottle is in which case and which pallet that case is on. "Consequently, they can follow the trail of that bottle from the time it leaves the production line to the time it arrives in the supermarket," Adams said. "The police can use the 2D bar code on the bottle, check the database and get a full audit trail of where that bottle has been."
Argos: Agros is one of the largest UK retailers and the second largest in jewelry sales. The project focused on tracking high-value jewelry from a central warehouse to a number of secondary warehouses in England, Scotland and Ireland and then on to stores. Since you can't put tags on earrings or bracelets, the goods were picked and put in small plastic totes. The totes were sealed with a bar-coded ring-seal and put on roll cages. Passive tags were used to track the totes and active (battery-powered) tags were used on roll cages.
Unilever, Tibbett & Britten and Safeway: In this three-stage project, Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer products company, put passive RFID tags on six-packs of its Lynx deodorant at its manufacturing plant in Leeds. Tibbett & Britten, a distribution company, tracked the goods through its distribution center and on to Safeway stores in the UK (see Unilever Tracks Lynx with RFID). Safeway tracks the goods on a smart shelf in the store.
Dell Computer and British Telecom: At its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Dell Computer implants an RFID tag in its laptops in such a way that if the tag is removed the laptop is destroyed. For the project, the tagged laptops were supplied to one of Dell's major customers, British Telecom. BT buys 10,000 laptops a year from Dell. BT is developing security systems to use the tags for physical security within their facilities. So if a laptop is removed without authorization, an alarm at the door is sounded.
e.centre, EMI, Handleman and ASDA: In this project, coordinated by e-center, the UK arm of EAN-UCC, Handleman tagged CDs coming from EMI. Tags were put into jewel cases at Handleman's distribution center in the UK and then tracked to the back of one of ASDA's stores. ASDA is a major UK retail chain owned now by Wal-Mart. The project was also designed to track returns, which can be 10 percent of CD purchases (see The Key to Tracking Unique Items).
Tri-Mex, DHL and Nokia: Tri-Mex tracks high-value products at container and vehicle level using satellite technology. For this product, they worked with cell phone maker Nokia and DHL, the delivery company. In stage one, they tagged consignments of mobile phones in packs of five. The goods were tracked from a Nokia factory in Finland to a DHL hub, where they are flown to the UK and trucked to a distribution center. The aim of the project was to be able to track goods not just at transshipment points, but in transit (For more information, see Nokia Tests Cell Phone Tracking).
Adams showed a video promoting the Nokia project. In response to a question from the audience, he said that the projects didn't pursue prosecutions, but that the goal was to develop audit trails that could be used in court.
"To sum up, we expect to get some detailed learnings out of these demonstration projects, but we've already established some general principle," he said. "The first one is understand your requirements before you start. The second is the power of collaboration cannot be underestimated. And third, you have to view the whole system. You can't just focus on the RFID portion. And finally, don't underestimate the complexity of these projects."
Back to Main Event Report
