Shopping at the speed of thought
From the digital home, according to the CeBIT exhibitors, the average person should move to the digital store. The largest German retailer Metro Group (in Russia operates the Metro Cash & Carry network) at CeBITe presented its concept of a “store of the future”, based on the ubiquitous use of RFID (RadioFrequency IDentification) technology - radio frequency identification. All products in this store have a special label in the form of a small piece of foil, similar to a postage stamp and containing a small chip on which information about the product is recorded. (This may be just a digital code, like on bar codes, and more detailed information about the expiration date, storage conditions, etc.) Such a label is capable of “responding” to the reader signals. When arriving at the warehouse, pallets of goods pass by the gate with a scanner, and the system checks on the fly whether the goods that were ordered, arrived at the warehouse, what storage conditions are required for them, what is the shelf life, etc.