February 2002

It is installing an automated logistics monitoring system for the Auto-ID Center, a pioneering project spearheaded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge University and a number of technology, logistics, retail and manufacturing companies.

Other participants include Procter & Gamble, Unilever, the Gillette Company, Philips, Johnson & Johnson International, the US Department of Defense and Postal Services and the Uniform Code Council.

 

Savi believes that the technology could save billions of dollars in lost, stolen, wasted or delayed products and would be "a quantum improvement" in supply chain efficiency.

A pilot project has already been implemented in Tulsa. RFID tags with microchips holding key logistics information were fixed to pallets at a retailer's distribution centres, and each RFID tag was assigned a unique Electronic Product Code (EPC). Reading devices in the distribution centres and stores automatically capture the unique numbers from each tag and transmit them to a network of computers. Savi's expertise is in integrating the automatic data collection network with the Internet.

The EPCs are read as a unique number that points to a specific Web address, which stores information about the pallet.

Initially, Gillette, Unilever and Procter & Gamble pallets are being tracked from the manufacturer's distribution centre to retailers. The second phase, expected to begin in the first quarter of this year, will test the system's capacity for handling more inventory and information at additional locations.