Leading Chinese jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook has won multiple awards for its self-developed “ICS RFIDtechnology Deployment” (IRD) project recently. The awards are a reflection of the Group’s innovative use of technology at the retail level.

Chow Tai Fook’s award-winning IRD project successfully integrates the Group’s self-developed “Inventory Control System” (ICS) with both RFID and IoT technologies for comprehensive application to the jewellery logistic and retail chains through the use of its self-developed smart devices that are also RFID-enabled and IoT-based, including RFID tag, Logistic Tray, mHand and Smart Tray.

The accolades include winner of the Retail and Supply Chain Management Award at the Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Alliance Awards 2014; the RFID Implementation Excellence - Gold Award and the RFID Application Innovation - Gold Award at the Hong Kong Internet of Things Awards 2014 and the Best IoT Applications Award at the Guangdong - Hong Kong IoT Awards 2014.

Kent Wong, Chow Tai Fook Managing Director said, “Chow Tai Fook Group’s award-winning IRD project, integrating RFID technology with IoT platform for applying to the workflows of both logistic and retail chains and in particular all the way to shop level will not only improve day-to-day work performance but also generate big data analytics for understanding customers and formulating business strategies.”

 Patrick Tsang, Deputy General Manager of Corporate Planning and Head of MIS Department, said, “The award-winning IRD project covers three very significant aspects in retailing - logistic management, stock taking and control, and sales operations - and provides one-stop solution to enhancing operational efficiency and work accuracy on the one hand while collecting big data for business analysis and decision making on the other.”

According to him, the biggest challenge of this project is to solve a basket of technical problems that are related to RFID signal reception. Basically, metal affects RFID signal reception, small RFID tags are difficult to sensor, and products closely placed also affect reading results. All these limitations apply as jewellery pieces are usually small in size, so are the price tags, and they are mostly placed side by side in the display counters or in stacks in the warehouse. Success finally came after numerous attempts and repetitive researches and trials.