Wal-Mart and RFID: In the retailer's own words
Bob Trebilcock, Modern Materials Handling -- Modern Materials Handling, 1/21/2004
In the two months since Wal-Mart announced its plans to have its top 100 suppliers using radio frequency identification (RFID) by January 2005, the most commonly asked question has been: is it possible? We asked Sarah Clark, Wal-Mart's spokesperson, for a status report.According to Clark, the project is on target. Wal-Mart still expects to have its top 100 suppliers utilizing RFID by January 2005. "We will be piloting the RFID tagging on cases and pallets in the Dallas market, which involves about 150 stores and clubs and three distribution centers," she said. Clark's comments came after remarks by Lee Scott, Wal-Mart CEO, at the National Retail Federation last week that some interpreted as a softening of Wal-Mart's announced schedule to launch RFID.
"It is interesting that when we briefed our top 100 suppliers, an additional 26 smaller suppliers found it so compelling that they asked if they could be included in the January 2005 timeframe to enable them to leverage the benefits," Clark added. "We believe that suppliers will be able to meet the date, and have not heard anything to make us think otherwise."
Suppliers have until the end of next month to review their plans and present any potential barriers to meeting the implementation date. Wal-Mart says it is committed to working with suppliers to address any potential issues.
"This is a team effort between Wal-Mart and its suppliers," Clark said. "Wal-Mart has assigned a Wal-Mart executive sponsor and a Wal-Mart program sponsor to each of these 126 suppliers to ensure that we are all working together in good faith to make this happen."
The retailer also believes that it's important for suppliers to ultimately benefit from RFID technology in their own operations. "We see the partnership and collaboration with our suppliers critical to the success of the rollout of RFID and are being extremely mindful that this initiative should deliver value not just to Wal-Mart but our suppliers too," Clark said. "This is the only way we will achieve mass adoption and thus drive the real benefits back to our customers." Those benefits should include better tracking and moving of inventory, faster receiving and shipping, improved quality inspection, fewer out-of-stock items resulting in improved shopper satisfaction, greater predictability in product demand, and better value – lower prices -- for the shopper as efficiencies occur. “RFID will help make sure we all have the right merchandise at the right time and at the right price to meet our customers' needs,” said Clark.
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