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Smart tags in the fashion industry

There’s a fashion-revolution taking place in the retail industry. From Kate Moss to Kylie, shoppers want to wear what the stars wear and retailers are rushing to provide it.

This 'Fast Fashion' phenomenon sees copies of the stars' outfits rushed into retail stores to meet the demands of today's shoppers. Consumers have become increasingly interested in the way celebrities dress, partly because fashion has become so much more visible on TV and in magazines and partly because fashion retailers are much better attuned to what celebrities are wearing and better at rapidly reproducing these items and getting them into the stores. The days when high-street retailers had lead times of up to 18 months on their designs have gone - and they took many companies with them.

Today, 'Fast Fashion' is king, and it brings with it some unique logistical challenges. Current logistics solutions mainly rely on bar codes - which commonly record only one specific line item - and on printed labels to record the size and colour of clothes. While bar codes have served well in the past, the need to control increasingly diverse stock ranges and reduce lead times, from the design table to the clothes rack, means that something new is required. With the logistical advantages that RFID tracking can offer, it is set to be an essential factor in this new retail environment - guaranteeing that retailers can meet the demands of today's fashion conscious consumers.

With line items made in different colours and sizes, RFID smart tags and labels can be used to reduce the complexity of stocktaking within the supply chain and to speed up the distribution process. With RFID it is possible to label boxes/crates so that they can be identified with complete accuracy wherever they are in the supply chain. The information stored on these labels is more comprehensive than on bar codes - containing data on the crates' contents, intended destination and shipping instructions. In addition, data can be added anywhere along the supply chain, in case of re-routing or simply to record actual path taken.

This kind of solution provides for more efficient shipping, faster throughput in the supply chain and more efficient stocktaking, just what the retailers of 'Fast Fashion' need. Products can be automatically scanned at loading bays and information immediately updated. Even the individual retail outlets can track down the stock they need. And in the case of sudden demand they can use RFID to find stock, in warehouses or any other store, and very quickly redirect it to their store.

So, with retailers locked in a battle to get key catwalk trends from the drawing board to the shelves as quickly as possible, the fashion industry is becoming interested in RFID tracking solutions. Some are already taking advantage of RFID to improve the organisational logistics required to control the diverse stock ranges they need to provide choice for their customers. In addition, by putting RFID labels on each item, another important issue for the retail fashion industry can be addressed - ie, making sure that products are on the right shelf or rack when the customer wants to buy it. Often a customer will try on a pair of jeans or a sports jacket and then return it to the wrong place. The next customer sees no items of that size on the shelf and walks out without purchasing anything, even though the item was in stock.

Smart tags on Spanish cattle

At their April conference in Salamanca (Spain), the Spanish cattle association FEVEX (Federacion de Productores de Ganado Extensivo) presented a new livestock tracking system to over 250 livestock farmers. The system uses Philips HITAG S ICs to electronically identify cattle, enabling the tracking of useful information including genealogy, vaccination history and place of origin for each individual animal.

Working together with the consultancy and systems integrator Neoris, FEVEX has developed an innovative solution which features HITAG S ICs encased in chemical and humidity resistant glass tubes only 22 mm long. Designed to be injected into the cows' hooves, the glass tubes are supplied by Swiss transponder producer Sokymat. The identification numbers stored on the ICs in these tubes can be read from a distance. In this innovative new system the reader antennas are buried underground at convenient pinch points, such as gates and doorways, allowing farmers and vets to remotely retrieve animal identification numbers quickly and easily.

The data linked to these ICs can also be used after the animal has been slaughtered, providing valuable information throughout the supply chain. This field-to-fork approach enables reliable information flow from the animal to the end consumer, providing trusted information on the origin of the meat they buy and enabling Spanish farmers to continue producing high-quality meat in the certain knowledge that their valuable brand name will be protected against low cost imports.

DEX IT uses biometrics to control security guards

A unique remote time and attendance solution, whereby remote personnel can be monitored centrally, was launched recently in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. The greatest item of expenditure within a security guarding company is the cost of wages and the first key factor to success is effective planning. To ensure the correct number of guards of the correct grades is scheduled for the correct number of hours at the correct sites, and that the hours scheduled at an overtime rate is kept at the minimum, is key to the effectiveness of the security.

The second step is to control the deployment of guards during shift changes. The Deployment Manager supported by ID Anyware is a robust management system based on fingerprint biometrics. The operations manager can manage and monitor the deployment of guards in realtime from his office while the system records time and attendance details. Under-or-over-postings will be identified immediately and corrective actions can be implemented.

"The fingerprint biometrics ensures that a guard can only clock himself in and not his colleague. The IDAnyware solution is finding strong favour in the industry and a number of pilot projects ran with great success over the last few months. The unit identifies the guard, records time and date and sends the information in realtime to the operations room," says DexSecurity Solutions MD, Ernest Cockcroft. "This enables security companies to manage thousands of guards at numerous sites very effectively. It provides the perfect access control and time and attendance solution for security companies to provide to their clients and is integrated with Easyroster, the application most widely used for the management of guards by the guarding industry."

Smart Middle East - Why?

In the Middle East many states are issuing powerful smartcards, which combine biometric ID with personal information. Several of these nations benefit from the latest IT systems, which integrate the government departments.

The addition of a smartcard to this infrastructure means that the public authorities can have a single view of all the relationships with the citizen wherever they touch a government department. This streamlines the delivery of services and makes it extremely difficult for a citizen to claim entitlements fraudulently or through impersonation because biometrics are used to verify identity.

Bulgaria and smart petrol

The regular customers of the filling stations of the Bulgarian subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell, Shell Bulgaria can register for Shell's programme for loyal customers SMART online, the company's PR office said. The company offers its customers special smartcards. The customers are awarded points for each purchase in Shell filling stations or shops and the points are collected on the smartcards. The smartcard owner is able to use the points for purchasing items from a special catalogue containing over 300 articles offered by Shell.

Smart Oyster

London is deploying Schlumberger Easyflow contactless smartcards for its groundbreaking London Transport ticketing and payment program - Oyster. Annual and monthly season ticket holders are already using the Oyster service - the first of its kind in the UK to travel across the UK's capital city. Oyster cards are now available to annual and monthly travel card and annual bus pass holders via the Internet. The rollout will be extended later to include 7-day tickets and a pay-as-you-go facility, Pre Pay.

Easyflow cards, which use Mifare contactless chips, help speed the movement of ticket holders in a system that services around six million users a day, since travel details can be validated by simply touching the card on a reader. Once issued, cards may also be reloaded for further periods of travel, and provide customers with greater purchasing flexibility. In addition, greater security is available, as registered Oyster cards can be hot listed if lost or stolen. One of the most ambitious city transportation infrastructure schemes in the world, Oyster is ultimately expected to handle five million daily transactions, and as such sets a model for urban travel in the 21st century.

Tuxedos get smart

Texas Instruments Radio Frequency Identification (TI-RFid) Systems has encased an ISO 15693 RFID tag in a plastic tag to be incorporated into garments for rental purposes requiring frequent dry cleaning. The 13,56 MHz 'Laundry Transponder' holds a unique item ID number in a read/write device. Additionally, the plastic case can be laser-etched with the ID number for visual identification.

China leads the world smartly

China is about to embark on the world's biggest experiment in the use of electronic identification cards, which next year will begin to replace the paper national ID cards carried by 960 million Chinese citizens. The core of the new ID cards is an embedded microchip storing an individual's personal information which can be read electronically and checked against databases kept by China's security authorities. Residents of most major cities will also carry other chip-based cards that control access to social services.

This massive transformation of how the government interacts with its citizens is proceeding nearly unnoticed by anyone outside a small circle of bureaucrats and industry executives. There has been little public debate on the costs and benefits of the programs, and China's state-run media have been mostly silent on the issue.

In their public justification for the new cards, Chinese officials have focused on how the cards can help solve a major law-enforcement problem: Paper ID's can be forged easily, contributing to fraud and financial crime. The plastic cards should be much harder to counterfeit. The amount of information to be stored on the new personal-identification cards is dwarfed by the data on social-security cards coming into use in many of China's big cities. These conveniently link account information for all the government services that a person receives, including medical care, welfare benefits and employment assistance. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security plays down privacy concerns, saying encryption systems on the cards will prevent unwanted crossover, such as an employer getting information about an employee's medical history. The ministry will control the huge databases being built to store the detailed records.

"We can use this information to better research macro-level policies, such as changes in benefits or the retirement age," said Wang Dongyan, who heads the ministry's Information-Systems department. He plans eventually to link the social-security databases to those of other ministries, such as security and education.

By the end of 2002, about 20 major cities had launched social-security-card programs, and more than 10 million cards were in circulation, some of them supplied by foreign card makers, including Schlumberger, of New York. But the Ministry of Public Security is keeping contracts for the ID card mostly limited to a tight group of domestic companies.

Exceptions are French defence and electronics group Thales SA and Israeli company, On Track Innovations, which have said they are supplying technology to the ID-card project. According to a Chinese industry executive, the security ministry likely will award its remaining contracts this year, allowing trials to begin in 2004, with large-scale issuance by 2005. As many as 800 million of the cards could be in use by 2006.

OTI's smart ID project to power Israel-Palestinian border crossing

On Track Innovations has announced that it has completed another stage in the delivery of the infrastructure toward the installation of the Basel Project, a cross-border contactless access control system, with the first border centre at the Erez checkpoint between Gaza Strip and Israel, scheduled to go live later this year. The system will monitor the entrance and exit of approximately 120 000 daily workers while assuring a completely secure, exceptionally fast border crossing.

The project, awarded by the Israel Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Israeli National Police, is the first border control system in the world to use both hand and facial biometrics with contactless chip technology as the primary methods of identification.

Smart Thai's

The Thai government will issue a multi-application national ID card to citizens starting in November of this year. The project is an ambitious one, calling for Java-based chip cards with 32 kilobytes of memory for applications and data. The data will include digitised fingerprints for biometric identification of the cardholder. The citizens' personal data, as well as insurance, tax and welfare benefit information will also go on the chip.

All citizens in this Southeast Asian nation of 61 million will receive a card from the age of one, but the first batch of 16 million cards will go to farmers, government employees and citizens renewing their old ID cards, the newspaper reported. The Thai Bureau of Registration Administration requested an 'open platform' card, including Java Card software, to allow it to add applications after issuance. The first batch of cards will cost no more than 100 Thai bath apiece (R15), says a government official.

Among other countries in the region planning to issue chip-based national ID cards are China and Vietnam. Plans call for both to be low-memory contactless cards. Separate reports say pilots for the massive Chinese project could begin early next year. The Philippines also plans to issue chip-based ID cards to foreign residents. Malaysia has issued more than 5 million multi-application national ID cards and the small sultanate of Brunei also has an ID smartcard program in operation.

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