METRO Adds 75+ Suppliers to RFID Program
In a third phase, METRO Group will expand the scope of its RFID "Tag It Easy!" program to involve more than 75 Chinese and Indian consumer goods suppliers, in addition to the 100 manufacturers already in the program from Hong Kong, China and Vietnam.
The "Tag It Easy!" program is part of METRO Group's Advanced Logistics Asia (ALA) initiative to improve logistics processes with its Asian suppliers, using RFID to track merchandise throughout the supply chain. METRO Group developed the "Tag It Easy!" program with Checkpoint, a strategic partner of METRO Group's Future Store Initiative, to assist suppliers in using RFID within their operations. Participants apply RFID labels on shipments bound for METRO Group's facilities in Germany.
"Since the program's inception, the processing of incoming goods at warehouses and stores has been accelerated considerably and read rates using UHF EPC Gen 2 tags have been highly satisfactory," says Dr. Gerd Wolfram, head of CIO-Office, METRO Group. "Time-consuming manual counts are no longer necessary, and that means goods get to the individual stores much faster and easier. Our ultimate goal is to optimize both the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain management. The key to achieving this lies in maximizing transparency in the flow of products and information upstream and downstream throughout the supply chain. This project has the capability of achieving such a transparency."
The "Tag It Easy!" program is part of METRO Group's Advanced Logistics Asia (ALA) initiative to improve logistics processes with its Asian suppliers, using RFID to track merchandise throughout the supply chain. METRO Group developed the "Tag It Easy!" program with Checkpoint, a strategic partner of METRO Group's Future Store Initiative, to assist suppliers in using RFID within their operations. Participants apply RFID labels on shipments bound for METRO Group's facilities in Germany.
"Since the program's inception, the processing of incoming goods at warehouses and stores has been accelerated considerably and read rates using UHF EPC Gen 2 tags have been highly satisfactory," says Dr. Gerd Wolfram, head of CIO-Office, METRO Group. "Time-consuming manual counts are no longer necessary, and that means goods get to the individual stores much faster and easier. Our ultimate goal is to optimize both the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain management. The key to achieving this lies in maximizing transparency in the flow of products and information upstream and downstream throughout the supply chain. This project has the capability of achieving such a transparency."