Avery Dennison announced the expansion of its nine-year RFID supply partnership with Marks & Spencer (M&S), a U.K.-based apparel and food retailer. M&S will extend its use of Avery Dennison’s RFID technology to all clothing and home wares in order to provide a better customer experience by ensuring that the correct product mix is available in-store and online. Prior to implementing RFID, M&S relied on optical scanners to track inventory, using bar codes to scan a maximum of 400 – 600 items per hour. RFID enables merchandise to be accurately scanned at up to 15,000 items per hour. This also enables M&S to replenish stock from the distribution center more quickly and accurately, making more garment sizes available to more customers. Avery Dennison says it has supplied almost one billion RFID tags to M&S with no data loss or duplication. The tags can be read when an RFID scanner is up to a meter away, making the inventory tracking process faster and more efficient.
