The Hindu : National : They're turning on those tags!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 02, 2004

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National

They're turning on those tags!

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE, MAY 1. Quietly, with hardly a technical hiccup or two, the world moved today, into a new era of electronic tagging. Major international supermarket chains are expected to lead the trend, whereby large packing cases — and ultimately individual consumer goods — will be affixed with tiny chips with built-in radio antennas that can be tracked in their thousands from afar. For starters, it will render shoplifting virtually impossible: Slip an item into your pocket; leave a shop without paying for it — and it will begin beeping an alarm somewhere.

The technology is called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) — and the global kick-start into a new tagged age has come from Wal-Mart, the big U.S. supermarket chain which has implemented selective radio tagging today and has asked its top 100 suppliers to tag their consignments — if they want to do business with it. Joining Wal-Mart in the radio tagging race are a number of fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) players who all have major India-based sales operations: Johnson & Johnson, Gillette, Nestle, Procter& Gamble and Unilever. While most of these companies will initially tag cases and pallets — not individual items — a few have decided to go the next step and affix radio tags on every retail unit: Gillette has already experimented by putting tags on its higher-priced shaving products, like the Mach 3 razor pack — though it claims its focus is on preventing theft within its own warehouses. The New York Times says today, that printer giant Hewlett Packard has decided to tag individual printers and scanners and has already made a start with a few models.

Metro, the German hypermarket chain, which opened its India operation in Bangalore in recent months is another early RFID player and is already testing the technology at home. So are the U.K.-based stores, Sainsburys, Woolworths, Marks & Spencers and Tesco. Major knitted garment makers in Tirupur near Coimbatore are known to be gearing up to radio-tag their shipments in case this is mandated by their customers.

India's Information Technology players having not been sitting around idly, while radio tagging morphs from tentative technology to industry standard: enquiries in recent weeks here in India's Silicon City reveal that a number of players are at the cutting edge of RFID technology and are well poised to ride the wave once its use snowballs:

Infosys announced in January that it had put together a special group to develop RFID applications for its clients.

NetKraft, another Bangalore-based technology company, has created an RFID-based application for one of the world's biggest luxury travel goods retailers to help them to improve their loyalty programme. The chip, embedded in the loyalty card of major customers, will alert the shop assistant as soon as they enter the store and enable personalised service.

SAP India is creating RFID-based supply chain management tools for a number of its corporate customers here.

The Hyderabad -based Bartronics, well known as a supplier of bar-code technology, has tied up with a U.S. partner, RFID Inc., to bring radio tagging solutions to customers here. The police in the Twin Cities are known to be using this technology in a pilot scheme to keep tabs on the patrols of beat constables.

The U.S.-based Sapient and the German Infineon are two companies whose Indian engineers at their R&D centres in this country are actively putting together RFID tools and applications.

In March, Tata Consultancy Services announced a joint initiative with Oracle, to provide RFID-based offerings.

It may be some time before Indian customers come face to face with RFID technology in the shops. This is because the cost of individual tags, even in millions is still 10 US cents or Rs. 4.50. The value of the item sold, must justify the additional cost of the tag.

Big sellers may move cautiously when it comes to tagging individual products, because privacy advocates are already raising alarm about potential abuse. What if the tag is not removed when you leave the store (do we remove barcoded labels?), they ask. What if the tag continues to beep its information from your home? Today's RFID tags can store and transmit about 300 words of information and ranges are currently in hundreds of metres.

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