Kerry J., Butler P. Smart Packaging Technologies for Fast Moving Consumer Goods
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198 Smart Packaging Technologies for Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Data is held in the database or on the Tag
READER
Electronic
Data Tag
Electromagnetic field
01100100
01100100
Air
Interface
Data Transfer
DATA BASE
chip
Figure 11.1 RFID technology.
most big retailers, has to deal with millions of items each year. Anything that can make
the handling of these items more efficient immediately creates benefits. In particular, some
items, particularly in the clothing area, are very size complex.
Imagine a customer coming into buy a two-piece suit for a man or woman. Apart from
liking the colour style and fabric type, they also want the exact waist size, and leg length,
plus the correct jacket size and arm length. Typically M&S will offer this sort of garment
in over 30 size variations. Unless the correct size combination is available when and where
the customer wants it, they may be disappointed and leave empty handed.
So how does RFID help to solve this problem? It does this by enabling each object to
which the microchip is attached to be given a separate identity, and for those identities to
be read quickly and remotely using an RFID reader. This information can then be fed into
a stock management data base.
11.1 Marks & Spencer Foods
Retail is detail. Knowing that a plastic delivery tray contains chicken breast fillets from a
particular source with a specific use by date is much more useful than just knowing that
it is a plastic tray containing poultry. Although some of the required information can be
contained within a bar code this information can only be read relatively slowly using a
bar code scanner. Bar code scanners need to be able to ‘see’ each individual combination
of printed stripes. In the case of RFID tags this information can be read very quickly and
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Figure 11.2 Plastic returnable tray with waterproof label.
virtually simultaneously by a reader that is in close proximity to the tags but not in direct
line of sight with each one.
Because of these advantages, late in 2000 M&S took the decision to start using RFID
tags on the plastic returnable trays it uses to deliver fresh food items in its stores. All new
trays were to be fitted with a high frequency (13.56 MHz) rewritable RFID tag contained
beneath a waterproof plastic label (Figure 11.2).
The timing of this decision was governed by the imminent need to replace the existing
stock of over 4 million returnable trays. The use of these returnable trays was pioneered by
M&S in the early 1970s and saves around 30 000 tonnes of cardboard each year. However
over the years the transport fleet had migrated from British imperial measurements to
modern metric units. In consequence the older trays were no longer an efficient fit into
the lorries and there were new additional features needed to improve handling efficiency
in the depots. The time had come progressively to grind up all the old trays and use
this plastic to make new metric trays. This was the ideal time to start installing RFID
tags on the trays. The process started in 2001 and was eventually finished in December
2003.
Each fresh food supplier draws trays from a central pool managed by M&Ss food dis-
tributor, Gist plc. The supplier washes and dries the tray and then fills it with fresh food
items Figure 11.3.
After the trays have been filled, the supplier writes key information about the food items
in the tray to the RFID tag attached to the tray. The RFID tags are ‘written to’ by specialist
readers at the food factories. This process has been refined and improved, and in 2006 over
100 factories are writing information to the tags, which are being routinely read by readers
in all the food depots (Figure 11.4).
The trays are then delivered on refrigerated transport to one of seven M&S dedicated
Gist food depots. On arrival in the depot the tags are read by mobile RFID readers in the
doorway (Figure 11.5), and the information used to confirm delivery accuracy. The depots
record the delivery of these trays and then, within a few hours of receipt, sort them and
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200 Smart Packaging Technologies for Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Figure 11.3 Tray wash at food supplier.
send them onwards to the final destination, which will be one of M&S’s 475 stores selling
fresh food. The store unloads the food from the trays onto the counter, and the empty trays
are returned to the depot on the next vehicle for onward transmission to the food suppliers,
where the cycle begins again. Each tray, on average, goes through this cycle two and half
times per week and has a design life of 7 years although many last much longer.
Figure 11.4 RFID tray writing at supplier World Wide Fruit.
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Figure 11.5 Depot fixed RFID reader with mobile reader in the foreground.
Speed is the essence of this operation as M&S prides itself on selling only very fresh
food and restricts the display life of most food products to only a few days. The use of RFID
tags on the trays has meant that the intake process can now take place six-times faster than
using conventional bar codes. Currently almost 2 million trays per week are being RFID
read in the food depots.
In future, M&S is planning for all the trays to be read in the depot on out-loading before
they are placed on the final delivery vehicle. This will further guarantee that the right food
items arrive at the right store, thus helping to improve the availability of fresh food items
for our customers (Figure 11.6).
11.2 Marks & Spencer Clothing
Clothing differs from foods in that garments are normally delivered as individual items from
the distribution centre to the store. In consequence the application of RFID to clothing has
been at individual item level rather than in trays or cartons (Figure 11.7). The higher
price of clothing in comparison with foods has also enabled disposable RFID labels to be
economically applied to individual garments.
In the case of clothing, the major application of RFID is to improve stock accuracy and
to improve availability of sizes and hence service, to the customer. Since 2003 M&S has
been trialling the use of this technology within the paper size and price labels attached to
garments. These special RFID labels are called Intelligent Labels
TM
(Figure 11.8).
M&S sells 450 million garments each year through a system that needs to be able to
handle 600 000 different style, size and colour variations at any one time. Stores get multi-
deliveries of garments each day, plus a constant flow of new lines, coupled with the need
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202 Smart Packaging Technologies for Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Tray tracking in supply chain
Improved processes
Longer
production
runs
Fast track into depots
Improved productivity
Inventory accuracy
Improved store
service
M&S
YOUR
Visibility
Improved
Availability
and
Customer service
Figure 11.6 Benefits of RFID tray tagging.
to return goods to the distribution centre for consolidation and redistribution. This creates
a challenging environment for the maintenance of an accurate stock file for each store.
Although bar-code scanning at the till point gives an accurate picture of what has been
sold, figures for the stock position in each store have to be deduced from an aggregation
of sales and all stock movements. This inevitably leads to a level of inaccuracy in precise
stock figures. Whilst this inaccuracy may not matter that much for simple items sold in
Figure 11.7 Garments in store.
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Figure 11.8 Intelligent label on a garment.
few sizes, it becomes critical for size complex garments where each store may only have a
small number of each size variation. Two extra items of one size could lead to there being
no stock of another size available even though the system showed all stock available in the
store. The ability of RFID to connect the real world stock and the system stock lies at the
heart of its ability to correct system accuracy. This is what Nicholas Negroponte, Director
of the Media laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls ‘Connecting the
bits and the atoms’. It exploits the ability of each microchip to contain a unique reference
number, which, when attached to a garment or any other object, can be used to identify that
item uniquely.
This uniqueness extends below the normal level of identification provided by bar codes.
For example, a bar code will say that this item is an emerald dress in size 12, but it will be
identical for all similar emerald dresses in size 12. An RFID chip will give a unique and
separate identity to all these dresses. In fact the technology today enables the creation of
10
27
unique numbers, which is 10 followed by 26 zeros, a very large number indeed (for
reference, scientists estimate that there are 10
22
stars in the universe and 10
24
grains of sand
on every beach in the world).
Having a unique identity means that garments can be counted without the need to worry
about counting duplicates. A good analogy here is the problem of a shepherd trying to
count seemingly identical and moving sheep. How can he tell if he has counted the same
one twice? With difficulty, unless he knows his sheep very well, but if he is able to identify
the unique characteristics of each animal, he will be able to do this.
The unique identity contained in each label, coupled with the ability to read this identity
using a radio scanning system has enabled M&S to develop a novel and efficient stock
taking system based on its Intelligent labels (Figure 11.9).
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204 Smart Packaging Technologies for Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Figure 11.9 Hand-held intelligent-label scanner.
The results from this RFID scanning are used to update the central stock file for each
store creating a very accurate picture of what stock is really present in each store. This
information is not just about the number of garments present, but about the style, size and
colour of each garment.
M&S started to trial RFID stock counting in one store in 2003. Garments were fitted
with removable paper labels containing a UHF (869.5 MHz) chip and antenna. Originally
the scanner was built into a food trolley and powered by a car battery (Figure 11.10)!
Today’s purpose-built equipment evolved from this early prototype. It is now deployed
in 42 major stores with plans in place to roll out the technology to 120 stores by spring
2007. The range of garments fitted with Intelligent labels will also increase to cover 12
major merchandise areas by autumn 2007.
The mobile scanning unit contains a screen and a separate wireless hand-held RFID
scanner (Figure 11.11). The hand-held scanner emits a low powered radio wave to read
the tags and then transmits the tag identification to the mobile base unit using a wireless
Blue Tooth connection similar to that used by mobile phones and digital organisers. The
mobile base station passes this information over the store wireless network to the store
server computer, which in turn is linked to all the central stock control systems in M&S.
Once a week for each department where the merchandise is fitted with Intelligent Labels,
the staff move the scanner out onto the sales floor, and start to scan the merchandise using
the hand-held scanner (Figures 11.12, 11.13 and 11.14).
The system has been designed so that when the scanner reads an Intelligent label for the
first time in the counting process, it emits an audible bleep. When it reads it subsequently,
no bleep is emitted. This means that the customer assistant carrying out the scan only has to
continue until no more bleeping is heard. They are then free to move on to another section
of merchandise.
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Figure 11.10 Original prototype RFID scanner.
The trials to date have proved highly successful. Using this system staff can accurately
count around 6000 garments per hour in a store and around 10 000 garments per hour in a
distribution centre where the merchandise is laid out in long straight aisles. This is much
faster than bar code scanning, as the need to read the bar code on each item (Figure 11.15),
and to take great care to avoid scanning the same item twice slows up the process. Typical
stock taking speeds in a store using a bar-code scanner would be around 60 garments an
hour.
The improved accuracy of information fed to the central data base has enabled any
missing sizes and styles to be identified and quickly replaced. This in turn has resulted
in an improved range of sizes being available in the store, which has impressed both our
customers and store staff. One major store recently commented that ‘RFID has resulted in
improved stock accuracy and availability leading to more satisfied customers and increased
sales’.
One of the characteristics of the M&S clothing system is that no garment details are
written to the tag (unlike the food system). This avoids the need for a worldwide network of
garment suppliers having to invest in RFID technology. The system utilizes the fact that a
unique number is encoded into each chip during manufacture. Once the chip has been made
into a tag it is laminated into a size label that is shipped to various printing hubs around the
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Figure 11.11 Mobile RFID scanning unit.
Figure 11.12 Hand-held scanner being removed from mobile scanning unit.
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Figure 11.13 Hand-held scanner being used to scan jackets.
Figure 11.14 Scanning ladies jeans.