McDonald’s China and Cainiao partner on RFID chips

McDonald’s China has partnered with Cainiao, Alibaba Group Holding’s logistics business, to enhance supply chain efficiency using radio frequency identification (RFID) chips and other technologies.

The RFID technology will be deployed in McDonald’s China’s supply chain with built-in tags on food packages, enabling the company to track products from factories to restaurants . According to a statement by Cainiao, a trial project of the RFID technology helped reduce the time needed for stocktaking each day from 1 hour to 15 minutes for restaurants while improving the accuracy of inventory data by 30%.

RFID is a third-generation identification technology, after bar codes and QR codes, and has been widely adopted in supply chain tracking . With a built-in microchip, data is transmitted through radio frequency signals.

Cainiao also mentioned that apart from deploying RFID technology to improve efficiency in inventory and logistics, McDonald’s and Cainiao will also explore digitisation and automation technologies in the supply chain.