Posted on 08/17/2003 12:18:33 PM PDT by PatrioticCowboy
Wal-Mart Expands RFID Mandate
The world's largest retailer says that it will ask all suppliers to tag pallets and cases by the end of 2006.
Aug. 18, 2003 - If anyone still has any doubts that Wal-Mart is serious about deploying RFID technology in its supply chain, they should be dispelled by its latest revelation. The world's largest retailer says it will require all suppliers to put RFID tags carrying Electronic Product Codes on pallets and cases by the end of 2006.
"We have asked our 100 top suppliers to have product on pallets employing RFID chips and in cases with RFID chips," says Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams. "By 2006, we will roll it out with all suppliers."
Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart's CIO, publicly announced in June that the retailer would ask its top suppliers to tag pallets and cases beginning in January 2005 (see Wal-Mart Draws Line in the Sand). The news created a storm in the retail and consumer packaged goods industries.
Suppliers are still struggling to come to grips with what the requirement means for them. The Wal-Mart requirement was the hot topic at a recent trade association meeting attended by representatives from Johnson & Johnson, Kimberley Clark, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and others.
"The only consensus was that there's a lack of clarity of what it really means," says one executive who was present. "We are all a little worried that the technology has a way to go before it's robust enough to be implementable in a live distribution center environment.
And we worry about doing something before the technology is ready and possibly having something that's obsolete quite quickly."
The news that Wal-Mart is expanding the requirement to all of its suppliers might not cause the same tumult as the first announcement. That's because smaller suppliers may be able to move more quickly to tag their limited number of stock keeping units (SKU) than large suppliers, which may have hundreds of SKUs, each with different RF properties. And they have an extra year to learn how to deploy the technology for their own benefit.
Wal-Mart plans to hold a gathering for its suppliers in the fourth quarter to provide more details on how it expects them to tag pallets and cases. Some of the larger suppliers are concerned that the schedule doesn't leave them enough time to meet the January 2005 deadline.
"Wal-Mart has said they will define in greater detail what they mean in the fourth quarter, but that leaves us less than a year to do this," says a supply chain executive from one major manufacturing company. "Nobody is going to want to deploy new technologies in November and December, because that's the big selling season."
"RFID Journal is an independent, online daily devoted to one thing: educating business people about radio frequency identification and its many business applications."
Microchips that can be read by a remote scanner. The technology has been around for a while; a small plastci credit-card affixed to a windshield with one of these chips installed allows motorists to pass toll stations without stopping; a scanner reads the card and charges the customer's account.
They've been installed on large shipping containers on docks and read by scanners on fork lifts; the chip identifies the container number, and the number is attached to the inventory of the shipping container. So these devices make it easy to know everything that's on a dock.
Wal-Mart wants all its suppliers to put these RFID's (Remote-Frequency Identification Devices) on pallets so that it can track inventory from the minute it leaves its warehouses to the time it is unloaded.
With chip technology costs continuing the decline, the next step will be to put RFID's on all products, so that they can be tracked all the way to purchase.
Inventory carrying costs are high, so Wal-Mart wants to know exactly what it has on hand, at all times.
Contrary to some here, these devices can be "killed" by a scanner at the last point of contact, so they're not going to be used to track what consumers buy.
Want to bet ...? It will be frequently forgotten or missed or fall throught the cracks for awhile and then the information will be sold or used in the case of divorces, health insurances, trials etc. Wait and see.
The chips are being designed to be killed, or to "die" within a certain number of cycles ("reads") precisely to prevent what you have described. Retailers are VERY sensitive to the concerns of consumers.
Paranoia is profitable.
This is CASPIAN bullshit! There are no hidden cameras on shelves nor at check-out stands.
Think about it for a minute. Why would Gillette spend this kind of money to track a $5.00 package of razor blades? Besides, who's going to look at these pictures? Some minimum wage security guard? And why is he going to look at them?
And what if the shopper picks up the blades, but decides not to buy them and sets them on a shelf in automotive? He didn't pay for them, but he doesn't have them, either
This is paranoid, Area 51-contrail garbage, and anybody with a brain in his head knows it is.
But you're just the kind of dupe that Katherine Albrecht is targeting with her hysteria.
Oooooh, I love it! When Mr. FourPeas and I are on vacation we "look" for these types on shortwave radio. I never considered that it would be so much fun on the web, too.
Information that might be twisted to prove that a person buys wine weekly or monthly ... thus can be cast as an alcoholic (as in a parental hearing), or as the reason for a customer falling down in the store, and so on ... the possibilities are multitudous.
As with most things the possibility of misuse is present. Unintended consequences. It is not a good idea to be individually identified.
Insurance companies can claim eating junk is what created illness or overweight and refuse to pay claims, since it was self caused. Think about it.
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