A 13-week test where EPC Gen 2 passive UHF RFID tags were put on denim jeans in a Bloomingdale's store found that the technology improved inventory accuracy by 27 percent and count speed by 96 percent versus bar codes used in a control store.
The tags, which were placed on the jeans as they entered the store, were removed at checkout.
Bill Hardgrave, executive director of the RFID Research Center, part
of the Information
Technology Research
Institute (ITRI)
at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, told RFID
Journal, that inventory in the test location "was
counted by both bar
code and RFID to
get a comparison of accuracy and to compare to system counts. It also provided
an efficiency measure of RFID over bar code."
The count speed was seen as a critical advantage that RFID had over bar codes, according to the study's authors. "Bloomingdale’s could take inventory counts 26 times with an RFID handheld reader in the amount of time it takes to do one inventory count with a barcode scanner... Certainly, inventory accuracy is higher when taking and updating inventory counts bi-weekly than it is when taking inventory counts annually."
Discussion Questions: What does this latest retail environment test of RFID technology mean for its actual implementation? When will RFID be ready for retail prime time and how will it be used?