'Smart tags' will help shopping

Consumer goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble is the latest company in the retail sector to trial 'smart tag' technology to track its products through the supply chain.

The company, which owns 250 brands including Ariel, Fairy Liquid, Pantene and Pampers, said the technology would help ensure that supermarkets have enough stock.

The smart tag technology is currently being piloted on a small scale with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

At the AMR Research annual conference this week David Heppenstall, associate director of global supply chain systems at Procter & Gamble, said the tags would give the company greater visibility of its supply chain and ensure the right amount of stock was on supermarket shelves to meet consumer demand.

"The consumer is definitely not satisfied and we need to have speed to shelf," he said. "Stick [the tag] on the bottom of a bottle of Fairy Liquid and it holds information on the expiry date and journey - when it left the plant, when it got to the shelf."

Heppenstall said the cost of the chips would have to come down from the current price of 5 cents each before they could be used on a large scale for all Procter & Gamble goods, and that the amount of data generated by the tags would be an issue.

"It is a little too expensive yet but we think it is coming. It is visionary but it's in pilot, and how do you manage that data, summarise it and make it usable?"

Last month leading UK retailers including Tesco and Marks & Spencer revealed plans to introduce Radio Frequency Identification tags onto products over the next five years to replace barcodes and to track goods through the supply chain.

The smart tags can store information on the product, its place of manufacture, expiry date and the raw materials used in production.