Large Metro Group RFID Trial Claims Strong Read Accuracy
Written by Evan SchumanThe world of retail technology has learned to always take notice when the Metro Group–a massive German retailer–starts to take anything seriously. So when Metro this week confirmed that it had invited Checkpoint Systems to join its ambituous 36-dock door trial of Gen2 RFID, it raised some eyebrows. Checkpoint’s official role is hardware integrator for the trial.
Each of 36 adjacent dock doors at the Metro distribution center was equipped with a Gen2 RFID reader, according to a story in RFID Update. At the same time, pallet loaded with about 60 tagged Procter & Gamble goods was passed through each portal and onto a docked truck at full operational speed, meaning each pallet was in the RFID read field for between one and one and a half seconds, the story said. A joint statement put the accuracy at a “98.6-percent-plus read rate simultaneously from multiple pallets as they were wheeled through the dock doors.”
“The results represent a significant milestone in European RFID operational deployment,” said Dr. Gerd Wolfram, Managing Director of Metro’s Information Technology Group.
-Marc
January 19th, 2007 at 6:35 am
It would be very instructive if Metro published a more detailed description on the methodology used to conduct these trials. The implication is that the raw read rate of both pallet tags and case tags reached the very promising level of 98.6%. However, this conclusion is contrary to the results recently published by Cardinal Health where their read rates were very low, and they recommended the use of “inference” reads, derived from an Advanced Shipping Notice (ASN), to improve the read rate to acceptable levels.
If Metro is relying on the ASN to bring the accuracy to 98.6%, then that raises the question as to why the read rate was not 100%. Were there instances where readings from a pallet load were actually 0?