Wal-Mart has launched a pilot program using radio frequency identification technology, as it moves ahead with plans for all its top suppliers to be using the inventory-tracking tags by January, the retail giant said Friday.
The pilot program is a significant step in Wal-Mart's much-publicized mandate for the technology known as RFID. Wal-Mart is requiring the company's top 100 suppliers to have the technology in place by the beginning of next year. RFID tags are chips armed with radio frequency antennas that provide detailed product information and allow for better tracking of inventory. Wal-Mart believes it can garner major savings by using the tags to improve its overall inventory management. Wal-Mart said it turned on an RFID tracking system at eight sites in the Dallas area, including seven of its "supercenters" and one of its distribution centers. Joining Wal-Mart in the pilot is a laundry list of major consumer products vendors: Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, Nestle Purina PetCare, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.
Executives from the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail chain said they believe the pilot will immediately demonstrate the efficiency inherent in using the tags. Simon Longford, Wal-Mart's strategy manager for RFID, said his company remains committed to having the technology up and running on a much larger scale in the near future.
News source: C|net
The pilot program is a significant step in Wal-Mart's much-publicized mandate for the technology known as RFID. Wal-Mart is requiring the company's top 100 suppliers to have the technology in place by the beginning of next year. RFID tags are chips armed with radio frequency antennas that provide detailed product information and allow for better tracking of inventory. Wal-Mart believes it can garner major savings by using the tags to improve its overall inventory management. Wal-Mart said it turned on an RFID tracking system at eight sites in the Dallas area, including seven of its "supercenters" and one of its distribution centers. Joining Wal-Mart in the pilot is a laundry list of major consumer products vendors: Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, Nestle Purina PetCare, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.
Executives from the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail chain said they believe the pilot will immediately demonstrate the efficiency inherent in using the tags. Simon Longford, Wal-Mart's strategy manager for RFID, said his company remains committed to having the technology up and running on a much larger scale in the near future.
News source: C|net
pulled, rude comments, shit story. Not worth the hassle.
I find that much more interesting than knowing how much of a product is on a shelf.
The article fails to mention what you state becuase while it could idenitfy stolen goods, it's can't locate them. RFID is an identification technology, not a tracking technology.
Currently their range is only about 10-20 feet.... so even if it could locate stolen goods, it wouldnt be beyond the first few rows of the parking lot. The parking lot would most likely also have several purchased items of the same product... so you'd have to know the uid of the specific stolen item to even distinguish it from the purchased ones... soemthing that is basically impossible by the method in which the system is being rolled out.
Also, to be noted is that range is quoted for open space without interference... you can be holding a tagged RFID item in your hand and chances are good the scanners wouldn't pick it up.
RFID as an anti-theft or recovery device? It's Useless
RFID is nothing more than a unique serial number of sorts that can be read via a radio. A serial number is great to identify the product once it's been found, but a serial number is useless in actually finding the product.
Last edited by 10547 on 30 Apr 2004 - 21:03
A short disclaimer follows:
1. I do not know everything about RFID
2. Another person on the forum may have already said something along these lines
PS. I am a computer engineer, I do know that it would be easy to implement the hardware stage of what I laid out, but when I said nifty for the programming I mean unless you were to modify some sort of existing program that already does stuff like this it could be very difficult to write. Followed by the whole system needing precise calibration so you don't have security guards strip searching some old granny who brought her grandchildren in for McDonalds, instead of the 30 year old, 90 pound weekling who looks like he is 230 pounds because he has $1000 worth of DVD's and video games stuffed in his jacket.
Thatis... until some significant strides are made to improving it's accuracy of reading 100% of tags accurately, 100% of the time... which it is not even close to doing yet).
Like I stated above, RFID is still at a stage where scanners often have times reading the tag when held in the hand... a shopping cart, filled with many items would pose even more of problem of everything getting read.
And fwiw... even when the possibility of doing what you suggests comes around... there's gonna be a whole hoard of people who will refuse to check-out in such a manner..... all those old ladies just love to watch each individually item ring up one at a time so they can question the price of every 5th item
Ain't that the truth!
Welcome to The New World Order.
first baked beans,
next human 'beans' :shifty:
WAKE UP PEOPLE OF THE WORLD!
No where did the article state this was the first use of RFID by WalMart. It was widely publicized that there were some test products using RFID last year in WalMart... they've just taken their use of the technology to the next step on their way to wide-usage.
ps. they're after you
Also counting the products will be easier, no more errors where massivie amounts of product gets shipped because some one forgot to count it.
will probably put me outta of a job
Right now they are pretty expensive to be put on cheaper items... costing somewhere around $0.23 each last report I read. Granted that was a lil while back, so I'd assume they've gone down in cost since then.. probably around $0.10-$0.15 each now.
But rest assured, while RFID technology will undoubtedly save some cash for WalMart, it adds to the cost of the suppliers.... and niether they, noe WalMart are eating this expense themselves.... they'll be passing it onto the consumer. But by the time it rolls-out to widespread usage, they'll only cost a few pennies a piece and will hardly be noticable on your receipt.
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