The global association Auto-ID Labs was founded in 1999 and is made up of 100 of the largest companies in the world such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Gillette, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, UPS, companies working in the sector of technology such as SAP, Alien, Sun as well as five academic research centers.[9] These are based at the following Universities; MIT in the USA, Cambridge University in the UK, the University of Adelaide in Australia, Keio University in Japan and ETH Zurich as well as the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.