Wipro to RFID enable apparel store on its campus

On July 13 this year, shoppers at the Arvind Mills apparel store at Wipro's
Electronic City campus will experience RFID technology first-hand. Three shelves
at the 3,500 sq ft store will be RFID enabled, which means that Wipro emp-loyees
will be able to purchase RFID tagged clothes. The company hopes that the store
wo-uld serve as a proof-of-concept cum demo center to showcase RFID technology
and uses for clients.

Speaking exclusively to CyberMedia News, Mani Subra-manium, Head (Retail
Solu-tions), for Wipro said, "We are also setting up an RFID lab to study
the physics of RFID and understand issues like business processes, tag
positioning and wave interference."

Wipro provides RFID solu-tions for leading retail and FMCG companies in the
US and Europe. The company recently implemented a project at the Metro Group's
RFID-enabled Extra Future Store, in Rhein-berg, Germany. The store show-cases
what the high-shopping experience of the future would look like.

Wipro has developed soft-ware called the Store Managers' WorkBench using
Microsoft's SharePoint Portal solution. Using this, custo-mers have the option
of hav-ing th-eir loy-alty ca-rd scan-ned as soon as they enter the store. The
soft-ware then checks the shopping history to find out approxi-mately when the
shopper would reach the cash counter. This allows the store staff to adjust
their tasks in accordance to the customer's shopping habits so that they can
manage their work efficiently.

Studies estimate that in the next three years, the global RFID Technology
market could reach $ 4 billion.



Priya Sreenivas

Bangalore (CyberMedia News)