Chips with everything

The Government has launched a £4.5 million anti-crime initiative aimed at using microchip technology to combat the trade in stolen goods.

Advances in electronic tracking technology means that companies can now implant a small identity chip, which reveals the origin and ownership of a product, into consumer goods such as televisions, computers and cameras.

The Home Office want companies to chip their goods as it reckons this will greatly increase the ability of the police to identify and recover stolen merchandise. Companies, meanwhile, will be able to manage their stock better, and reduce stock loss; chipping goods, predicts the Government, will deter would-be thieves by making it more difficult to sell on stolen goods, and will prevent counterfeiting. It will also make it easier for property owners to prove theft in a court of law.

The Home Office has appointed Integrated Product Intelligence (IPI), an independent technology consultancy (which already works with retailers to help them introduce security asset management systems), to co-ordinate the first stages of the “Chipping of Goods Initiative”. IPI’s brief is to build awareness in industry of the real advantages of chipping goods, and to set up a handful of demonstration projects which show how asset tagging can benefit police and businesses.

Brian Weeks, managing director of IPI, says: “The Government has allocated the money over two years, and we will set up showcase demonstration projects which will show that this kind of tracking can be done.”

Weeks acknowledges that asset tracking has yet to truly take off in the UK, and would like to see Britain emulate the US. Across the Atlantic, a number of major companies use RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to track goods on their journey from the manufacturer to the shop-floor.

IPI won’t just be recommending use of RFID technology, though. IPI will suggest use of any number of microchip technologies, be it RFID, electronic data tags or radio data communication systems. It will all depend on the manufacturer’s, distributor’s or retailer’s needs, emphasises Weeks: “There’s a lot of good technology out there, but this initiative is not about promoting particular technologies or manufacturers — it all depends on the application.”

Trials of product-chipping will begin in the first quarter of next year and are likely to run for three or four months, says Weeks. However, he adds: “There’ll be no constraints on the size or length of each project, or on the type of goods involved — they don’t have to be electronic goods. We’re also open to either a single company, or consortium of companies getting involved with us on a project.”

Weeks hopes the trials — and subsequent findings on what chipping technology works well and what doesn’t — will eventually influence standards on tagging.