Data synchronisation helps Nestlé get to market faster

Nestlé, for some time now an industry champion of data synchronisation and standardised product data, is touting the benefits it is seeing come out of the initiative.

Cited case in point: Nestlé’s move to bring the successful Polish brand Winiary and its range of soups, stocks, sauces and desserts to the UK (see article in the Guardian).

As reported in an article at Food Manufacture, Nestlé was able to use its 1SYNC global data synchronisation (GDS) capability to accelerate the UK launch of Winiary.

According to Chris Tyas, Supply Chain Director for Nestlé UK and Ireland, “We were able to get [Winiary] to market very quickly because we were able to extract all the data straight out of our systems in Poland.”

As the Winiary range was to be launched in the UK as-is, in the original Polish packaging with only an “over sticker” applied with details in English, this meant the Polish product data could be supplied as-is to UK retailers.

“The important thing in this is speed to market and we were able to get the product into the market place very, very quickly and when it was seen to be a success, to extend the range in June.”

Tyas, who is also vice chairman of the GS1 UK data synchronisation group, explained that “1Sync provides us with the ability to take information from our systems and translate those into any globally compliant tool, be it retailer specific or a public data pool like that of GS1.”

Last December, Nestlé Europe, Procter & Gamble and the Metro Group announced (pdf) the go-live of item data exchange through the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), connecting together the SINFOS data pool used by Metro Group and the 1SYNC (formerly Transora and UCCnet) data pool used by Nestlé Europe and P&G.

Metro Group to penalise RFID non-compliance

With the holiday period over and a return to business-as-usual, I found myself reading a number of posts concerning retail RFID on Evan Schuman’s blog StorefrontBacktalk, notably Metro Group’s decision to put some muscle behind its RFID programme by penalising suppliers who fail to comply with its requirements.

It’s been reported elsewhere (e.g. RFID Update) about Metro stepping up its RFID deployment plans:

• Full deployment at 200 locations in Germany
• Implementation rate of approx 10 locations per week
• 650 suppliers mandated to play ball by early 2008

Certainly this echoes other RFID announcements e.g. that of Wal-Mart, but what Evan Schuman and others (e.g. RetailWire, RFID Update) underline as going a step further than even Wal-Mart, is Metro’s intention to fine non-compliant suppliers. Any supplier failing to meet Metro’s contractual requirements regarding tagged pallets will be invoiced additional handling charges.

I haven’t yet found any detail about the level of RFID tagging required by Metro, but I would assume we are talking pallet and case tagging but not SKU tagging.

Of course whether or not mandatory RFID actually gets entrenched in supplier contracts will depend on the next round of contract negociations. Metro Group has muscle with its suppliers, that’s clear, but the cost to suppliers of implementing tagging will be high. Some suppliers have already bought into the benefits of RFID (e.g. Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and other majors who participated in the Metro pilot), but others may not be so keen. Remains to be seen.