RFID: Metro Expands "Tag It Easy" Program

Metro Group, one of Europe's largest retailers and a pioneer in the use of Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID), has expanded its RFID program to enable 30 Chinese vendors to tag products bound for Metro stores in Germany.   US RFID tag manufacturer Checkpoint Systems is partnered with Metro in the expanded program.

The article below is from RFID Journal.  You may also be interested in this earlier freightdawg article that contains an excellent video on Metros RFID program.   Metro is one of the few retailers who are making RFID a reality in their supply chain program.   

clipped from www.rfidjournal.com Metro Group Expands RFID Pilot in Asia The retailer's new "Tag It Easy" program with Checkpoint Systems will enable 30 Chinese suppliers to tag goods bound for Metro stores in Germany. By Mark Roberti May 23, 2007—Metro Group, one of world's largest retailers, is expanding its Advanced Logistics Asia RFID pilot to include several Chinese suppliers. The company has teamed with Checkpoint Systems, a Thorofare, N.J.-based provider of radio frequency identification systems, to provide RFID labels for the participating suppliers. "We have been testing RFID in our supply chain from Asia to Germany since 2006," says Gerd Wolfram, managing director of MGI Metro Group Information Technology. "We've been achieving good read rates, and everything has been working fine. So we decided to have a supplier event here in Asia and do a bigger test with more participants." Until now, Metro's Advanced Logistics Asia initiative has involved a third-party logistics provider, Fat Kee Stevedores, and a small Chinese supplier. The two companies have been applying UHF Electronic Product Code (EPC) tags to containers loaded with cartons of various goods to be exported, including pens and kitchen gadgets. At the Fat Kee facilities in China, the packages are pushed through an RFID portal. After the system reads the tags, software creates an electronic packing list, which is sent electronically to MGB Metro Group Buying HK to be checked for accuracy. The list is then used to generate an advance shipping notice (ASN), which is sent to Metro headquarters. When the goods arrive at a Metro Group distribution center in Unna, Germany, the system reads the tags and checks them automatically against the ASN. The pilot was deemed a success, so Metro Group decided to expand the system to additional suppliers in Asia. Today, Metro is holding a meeting with its Hong Kong suppliers to explain how the pilot, known as "Tag It Easy," will be run. Suppliers will be able to access a secure Metro extranet called Metro Link, which will let them view their purchase orders. Each order will have an EPC and Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) associated with it. Checkpoint, as the nominated third-party label supplier, will supply and give technical training to the suppliers.

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Comments

[Amien]

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