Japan moves closer to a reality of unmanned stores after successful RFID trial

The Japanese government has taken its first steps to creating unmanned stores to address the labour and supply chain challenges in the country’s retail industry. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) has announced it will build on the successful pilot of a project which saw three convenience stores adding RFID tags to products to improve item-level inventory monitoring. The long-term ambition of the initiative is to enable stores to be entirely unstaffed, with RFID enabling customers to pay for their basket of goods automatically on leaving the store.