Supply chain

German retail giant Metro Group is to use Reva Systems' Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) products in Europe's largest rollout of RFID technology.

By the end of the year, Metro hopes that more than 100 of its Real hypermarkets and all of its 61 Metro Cash and Carry outlets in Germany will be able to process incoming goods on a pallet level by contactless data transfer.

It has already started to install RFID-equipped portals at the stores.

The company said it opted for second-generation electronic product code (EPC) tags because they could be "read faster" and were "more reliable" than their predecessors.

It chose Reva for the venture because the American company offered a "high performance infrastructure" that satisfied its requirements.

The information provided by RFID is particularly useful for rapidly and accurately obtaining feedback on goods received in operation areas, such as loading docks.

"By using this technology, we are moving RFID out of the innovation labs and into working retail stores," said Gerd Wolfram, Metro's managing director of information technology.