Aarti Khoesial

Object of the Future: RFID tags used in supermarkets

Introduction

RFID tags used in supermarkets is not really an object, but it is for sure something that definitily will happen in the future and that will have a huge impact on the supply chain management and also on the customers satisfaction of supermarkets. That is why I find this an interesting topic for the future.

Defenition

Defenition RFID

RFID ( Radio Frequency Identification) is a wireless datacollection technology that uses electronical tags to store data. In those chips a lot and all kind of data can be saved, which makes the RFID technology usefull in verious ways.

Defenition in the context of supermarkets

RFID tags are electornical tags which can be seen as replacements for bar codes.

Current Situation

Current Situation of RFID's used

Currently, RFID is used in numerous ways:
- for tracking ex.libraries
- implants in humans
- implants in pets

Current Situation of RFID's used in supermarkets

Some supermarkets are already experimenting with the RFID tag. For example, in Germany it is already used and British supermarket chain Mark and Spencer uses RFID tags to track their supply. Also, Wall Mart required all their suppliers to apply RFID to all shipments. Some Dutch supermarkets are already experimenting with RFID: Ahold, Schuitema.

Advantages of RFID usage in supermarkets

- no queues: a whole shopping car full with products can be scanned at once, no need to scan each product seperately.
- on a RFID tag more information and information of other kinds can also be storaged or generated. ex. picture of everyone who bought Gillete razor blades.
- quicker and efficienter stock control;scan automatically when shipment arrives, when enters warehouse, leaves warehouse, enter supermarket.This can be done more efficiently than with barcodes because in relation to barcodes, RFID tags offer the following advantages:

     1. RFID tags can be read more rapidly and over more distance

     2. Scanner does not have to point exactly towards the RFID tags

     3. RFID tags take less space

Problems for RFID usage in supermarkets

- costly for the suppliers and as they already have a very good stocking system, the new RFID system will be high investment with little change in profit. But if they want to remain their relationship with the retailers like Wall Mart, they will have to apply RFID tags.
- privacy violation: So much can be done with RFID tags, private information of customers could be gathered without their knowlegde, customers are not even always aware of the presence of a RFID tag or reader. Whenever supermarkets use the information gathered by RFID, they should have permission of the customers, customers should know what information is gathered and where this information is used for. Customers have to trust the retailers.

Conclusion

For supermarkets RFID is certainly a technology that could lower their labor costs, make their stock control more effeciently, manage their supply chain more efficiently and deliver more value to their customers. But the problems are the violation of privacy of customers. A solution may be to remove or disable the RFID tag at the moment the products leave the store.
For suppliers on the other hand, the use of RFID tags is not that profitable, as RFID tags are costly and they already have an efficient system. Furthermore RFID tags can not be used on all goods (for example, tinned products).
As a conclusion, the time when all products in a supermarket will have a RFID tag is maybe within a couple of years, maybe it will take some more time, but it will definitely happen!

Aarti Khoesial

References

1.Dutch supermarket plans RFID trial [1]
2.RFID Journal [2]
3.Defenition Answers.com [3]
4.Spies in your shopping basket[4]
5.Supermarkets can't wait to get RFID in shops [5]
6.Scanning intelligence [6]

Personal Reflection

Start up

When this course started we only had a vague idea of what to expect from this course. This was a whole new experience for us, to look into the future by the making scenarios. We only got a good understanding of scenarios during the last 2 courses (5th and 6th).
This course about scenario thinking is very broad and exciting; but sadly we had only limited time – 6 lectures- to really experience the making of scenarios. And beside that, the 6 lectures were divided into 3 days; I think it would be better if it was divided into 6 days instead, because then we would have had more time in between the content and the workshop part. That would be better for us, as for almost all of us, scenario thinking was a new concept.
But a very big plus point of this lecture was, was that the lecturer was someone who really experiences scenario thinking and planning in his daily work; he taught us the meaning and importance of scenario planning is a very fun way (with the video . Although the lectures will go on for a whole day, they did not bore me.

Future of Intellectual Property

During already the first class, we had to choose a topic about which we would like to plan some plausible scenarios. So, the beginning was already exciting! The lecturer wanted all of us to choose a topic within Web 2.0, because he thought that Web 2.0 will be the future of the world wide web, and it would be nice if we would make scenarios about that than.
Mine group, the girls group, wanted to do the future of intellectual property, but there was also another group that wanted to do the same topic. It was difficult to decide, as both groups were all excited about this topic, but finally we got the topic.
I, personally, preferred this topic, because although I had not heard about Web 2.0 before, I was all into Web 2.0 because of the inspiring words of the lecturer. If Web2.0 is going to be the future of World Wide Web, than it will have a huge impact on the whole world; that is why I found it so fascinating. And that is why I loved to do some research and ‘predict the future’ of this topic. I also thought that this will be good for mine own development, to know more about something that is going to be so huge. And from all the sub-topics that were available about Web 2.0 we chose Intellectual Property (IP), because I personally, wanted to write scenarios about a less technical topic (bottom internet and television were both a bit more technical) and beside that, IP was about laws, and I did not have any experience in laws and so on, so it was kind of challenging to do something concerning the IT legal issues.

Research phase

Doing research about this topic was fun, because it was completely new for me and also because it seemed like it is about something important and immense. Luckily, I also had a fun group, the girls-group, consisting of Ashwina, Casey, Sandhya, Yue and myself. We had a lot of fun working together, and I must admit that those fun and laughing moments have also contributed to an exciting scenario planning experience.
I must also admit that the 5 of us were confused in the beginning about IP, open standards, open content and so one. This because we did not had many experience in this field yet- this made the assignment more challenging for us. But as the research went on, we gain more inside into those topics, and it became clearer to us.
We divided the whole topic – future of IP – into 5 subtopics and mine part was “Creative Commons (CC) “. What can I say about CC, I think CC will be used a lot more in the future; because it has no negative side affects; it only offers flexible copyrights to owners of creative work, like authors, singers, scientists etc. CC is not meant to replace Copyright, but only to extent it. That is why I think CC will play a big role in the future of IT laws and that is why I am glad that I have learned so much about it during this course.

Creating the Scenarios

Making of the system map was fun, especially because the lecturer told us that it must be as messy as possible. And also because our whole group was well-informed about our topic (due to the research we already did) and that is why we were full of ideas and driving forces that may have an impact on the evolvement of IP.
Finally we were there! During the 3rd – 4th lecture the lecturer explained to us that there are 3 ways to make a scenario. First we chose for the one with the two axes (matrix), but the lecturer convinced us to choose the one with the different uncertainties and than to look if uncertainty 1 is going to happen for driving force 1, which uncertainty will than happen for driving force 2 etc. Thus, we took that approach to develop our scenarios.
After lot of brainstorming and fun we came up with 3 scenarios. The brainstorming sessions were surprising, one would not expect that certain development or event could also take place on first hand; but as we thought further and deeper and as we discussed more and more with each other, we got convinced that certain scenarios could indeed take place.
Although I have to admit that we experienced some limitations in time, I still had a great experience with the development of scenarios for the future of IP.

Finally

The lecturer promised us that we would look different to the future/world once we would have finished the course. I must say that I look different to the future now. Before this course, I was convinced that a certain subject would develop in a certain way (or maybe there were 2 ways in what it could develop, a good and a bad way), but now I realized that there are more than 2 scenarios in which certain subjects may develop, there are more possibilities for the future.
Furthermore, I also learned that if I will start thinking about all the driving forces, enablers and inhibitors of such an event/development; that I will then get a never ending list of those forces. I also learned that all those forces are connected to each other and influence each other.

Academic Reflection: The Difference between Forecasting and Scenarios

Forecasting

Forecasting is the method that was used in the history to predict the future. Depending on what is already known about the present, a model in the future is being forecast by the use of standard methods.
Forecasting results in only one possible future; management will then take that future model in consideration, when making strategic decisions.

Scenario thinking

While forecasting is planning for only one future, scenarios are about planning for any future. Scenarios are possible maps, alternative descriptions of the future.
Nowadays scenarios are used more often than forecasting. Scenarios are most useful when the external factors influencing the strategic planning are complex, dynamic and uncertain.

Differences between forecasting and scenario-thinking

External factors: Industrial Age vs. Information Age

In the 1960-1970 the world was in the industrial age; back then people used a forecast to base their strategic planning upon. Back then that was a good approach because back then the future was more certain; not completely certain, but more certain than nowadays. And based on those certainties a possible feature – forecast – would be developed using standard methods. Starting in the 1980-1990, the world changed into an information age. Everything was developing much faster, the future became more and more uncertain; as it was depending on much more factors now (ex. as a result of globalization). The future is now a moving target. People were also planning more for a long term, using assumptions (because no-body can predict the future. Based on those assumptions, different scenarios developed.

Scenario-thinking overcomes biases

If there is only one possible future, as is the case with forecasting, the human mind will be tempted to develop this forecast according to their own biases. With the use of scenarios, we will be more open-minded and think outside the box. Take for example the gorilla-basketball video we saw during the first class on ICT Planning; we were concentrating on how many times the white team passes the ball, that we did not even see that a black gorilla came on screen. This is the same with forecasting, the management will be so much focused on the forecast, that he will oversee other factors that may influence his planning.

Solving Uncertainty vs. Revealing Uncertainty

“Solving uncertainty: Researching, forecasting, predicting, system analysis, aligning constituents.”[1]
“Revealing Uncertainty: Dialoging, conversing, learning, imagining, finding unique perspectives”[1]
We can see that forecasting is more about solving the uncertainties and scenarios are more about revealing the uncertainties. Because the world has become more dynamic now, it is impossible to solve all uncertainties about the future, which is why scenarios are becoming more and more popular now; scenarios are based on uncertainties about the future. By revealing uncertainties scenarios allow companies to experiment (with different scenarios) rather than putting much effort, time and money in one bet (with single forecast) – bet, because we do not know for sure yet if that will be the future.

Cultural reluctance to use scenarios

Scenarios are not and end-product. If the scenarios are developed, they must be used in the strategic planning process. A lot if times scenarios failed because of the wrong usage in the strategic planning process, rather than being the wrong scenarios.
Partly, this is an administrative heritage problem. Companies are used to work with forecasting, they are used to work towards one possible future and managers are supposed to know where they are, to know where they are going. But with the use of scenarios, there are more than one possible future, which makes it more difficult to plan a good strategy, and now managers are must take into consideration different future possibilities, thus they do not know where they are going.

Differences in usage of scenarios and forecast for strategic planning

With forecast, we develop only one strategy to meet that forecast and stick to that strategy.
With scenarios it is much more difficult, we cannot develop strategies for all different scenarios and than when we are moving towards the future, find out which strategy is more useful at that time; because it is in-efficient. Neither can we assign probabilities to the different scenarios and then only develop a strategy for the scenario with the most certainty. Because the whole meaning of the scenarios is to deal with uncertainty and if we develop one strategy based on only one scenario, we are not dealing with uncertainty. Using scenarios to determine strategic planning decisions requires skill and sophistication. This takes time to acquire, which is why in the beginning organizations can use step-by-step methods to work with scenarios. But when they have more and more experience, it will become a more and more intuitive process that is based on intelligent discussions.
There are several ways to use scenarios in the strategic planning process; those ways are obviously more difficult than the usage of forecast. But the usage of scenarios will provide the management with more choices, more feasibility, and will finally more plausible.

References

[1]"Planning for the future of uncertainty: Scenriothinking"; presentation by Doug Randell, Global Business Network [2]"Introduction to Scenarios"; Arden Brumeel, GBN Canada [3]"Strategic Thinking in the Information Age and the Art of Scenario Designing";Ivan Klinec, Institute for Forecasting ,Slovak Academy of Sciences