Kimberly-Clark's road to RFID

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large and D'Anne Hotchkiss, Editor of RFID News & Solutions -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/15/2005

RFID has the potential to drive operating efficiencies, security in the supply chain and enhanced consumer experiences.

Yet there are adoption barriers to realizing those benefits, including technology, integration and environmental and privacy issues. Moreover, there is a fear of the kind of business process change necessary to take advantage of RFID.

That was one of the messages delivered at the third annual RFID World event by presenter Mike O’Shea, director, Auto-ID/RFID strategies and technologies for Kimberly-Clark (888-525-8388).

“We have a favorite phrase at Kimberly-Clark,” O’Shea told the audience at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas earlier this month. “The only person who likes a change is a baby with a wet diaper.”

O’Shea described Kimberly-Clark’s efforts at making the change to RFID. They include the company’s vision for the technology as a supplier of health and hygiene products meeting mandates from the Department of Defense, Wal-Mart and other major retailers implementing RFID. He also detailed efforts to uncover the business case for applications beyond compliance in its own supply chain.

For instance, Kimberly-Clark created a multi-disciplinary team to support RFID development activities. The team includes members from packaging, computer and connectivity services, research, manufacturing, distribution and sourcing, as well as supply management.

In addition, the company created a “dirty” lab that, according to O’Shea, replicates the reality of a manufacturing and distribution environment to test RFID solutions.

“Our first lab was a pristine environment and that was a mistake,” said O’Shea.
“You couldn’t make the technology fail. But that didn’t replicate the real world where we and our customers work.”

Some of Kimberly-Clark’s key findings are similar to those of other early adopters: “RFID technology is still a challenge,” commented O’Shea. “We need RFID-friendly packaging. The read reliability is improving but still needs work. And there are physical infrastructure challenges.”

Today, Kimberly-Clark is using that lab to re-engineer packaging solutions, evaluate RFID hardware and middleware, and develop scaleable deployment solutions. More importantly, the company is developing new business processes that can take advantage of RFID.

“In the end, it’s not the technology that counts,” O’Shea said. “It’s how you re-engineer your business processes that will bring the value.”