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Radiofrequency Source Protection
If I were to define it in one line, I would simply say that Checkpoint is the Source Protection Company. We are specialists in radiofrequency (RF 8,2Mhz) applications for the retail market and supply chain as a whole. Our wide experience in merchandise labelling, protection, and tracking has allowed us to start up an unstoppable process that will revolutionise the entire retail industry, with benefits going from the point of manufacture to the point of sale. Such benefits will enhance our capacity to track and control goods, to protect them from shrinkage due to theft, counterfeit, fraud, or diversion, and to market them more aggressively, thus increasing sales and net profits for manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers and creating a superior shopping experience for customers. Source protection, i.e., source tagging is just the beginning of a win-win-win revolution.
Source Tagging, the Starting Point
Source tagging brings security to the products where it is most profitable, not by manual application at the store level, but automatically at the manufacturing or packaging stage. Merchandise can thus be protected from the very first moment it enters the supply chain. This is not a new concept at all. In fact, the different technologies in the electronic article surveillance (EAS) industry have been competing for years to convince all players involved – manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers – of the benefits of source protecting their products.
It is now when RF source tagging seems to be building consensus between them all. What was earlier perceived as a problem to be solved by security managers and suppliers, is now seen as an interesting and rewarding challenge. Merchandise can leave the counters and be sold in open display, customers can touch and see the products properly, which rockets impulse shopping and, with it, the sales figures.
RF EAS systems have had much to do in this success. Their technical advantages (including paper-thin labels easy to conceal and hard to tamper, high detection rates, and scan-integrated deactivation), as well as their increasing presence in all retail markets are managing to make radiofrequency emerge as the de facto standard technology for source tagging programmes world-wide.
And, what is more, today’s technology is the key for tomorrow’s protection.
RF ID, a Future Just Begun
RF ID stands for ‘Radiofrequency Identification’, the next generation of product tracking and protection. This ‘tomorrow’s’ technology relies on a tiny microchip that, attached to a paper-thin RF label, becomes a unique ID for the products as they go through the supply chain.
With the help of this source-applied unique ID, those responsible for moving the goods through the supply chain can receive and update information from the microchip, which enables advance tracking at every step of the chain. As you can imagine, benefits for manufacturers and suppliers are countless, both for inventory and security reasons.
What about retailers and customers? They just have to use their imagination. This is what we call ‘Next Generation Marketing’, a new shopping experience in which self-checkout and one-to-one promotion campaigns are possible, in which shrinkage becomes a minor problem. Checkpoint is now working with Mitsubishi Corporation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop new RF ID applications and make them a reality.
When will this future arrive? RF ID technology is now available with a full range of products and applications that can be easily implemented by upgrading the current RF EAS systems. It is a question of time for RF ID to change the retail market from within. In the meantime, just prepare for the revolution.
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