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Wal-Mart's Faltering RFID Initiative
itphobe writes "Baseline magazine has up an in-depth look at Wal-Mart's years-old RFID initiative. Things apparently haven't gone so well for the retail giant. 'The lack of any obvious concrete gains has raised questions as to whether Wal-Mart should delay or freeze its RFID plans. For now, however, Wal-Mart says it will stay the course ... By January 2006 the company hoped to have as many as 12 of its roughly 130 distribution centers fully outfitted with RFID. That effort stalled at just five distribution centers. Instead, the company is now focusing on implementing RFID in stores fed by those five distribution centers so it can gain a bigger window into its supply chain.' Overall the article focuses on the original intentions of the RFID project vs. their implementation. It also discusses several of the technical elements required to adapt RFID for the US juggernaut."
It's been predicted for years: the cost of an RFID tag will drop to 5 cents and the world will be revolutionized. I did some calculations years ago, and 5 cents seems to be about the point at which the cost of the tag on every item is worth the benefits gained in inventory tracking.
But the price seems frozen at 10 cents. And that is the cheapest tags in HUGE quantities. For a small business like mine, 20 cents seems to be the current rate.
I've read here on \. that the RFIDs were going to be used by the government to track my sneakers from space and that the second I walked into the Gap I was going to get bombarded with ads based off the stuff I was wearing.
...
After reading that, I became extremely paranoid and started wrapping myself in tinfoil every day. But then I realized the RFID could be in the tinfoil itself. So I rewrapped that tinfoil in other tinfoil. They told me I could kill it with microwaves, so I took the tinfoil I was wrapping the other tinfoil in and put that in the microwave. That didn't really work out to well. Now I've been walking around looking like some 1950's space alien comfortable that my previous purchases of BVDs would be safely hidden beneath my shorts and you're telling me that these guys can't even read an RFID out in the open?
You guys are just big jerks you know that?
Having worked IT for JCPenney, we heard a lot about RFID. The concept behind RFID is the holy mantra of supply chain logistics IT staff - VISIBILITY!!!!! However bicycles are a perfect example of semi visible. Picture a pallet of these, all with little RFID tags here and there. Then the RFID reader squirts out a radio signal which bounces merrily around (Mathematica, do a graph of this one!). It might miss some bicycles and have trouble reading others. So POOF, there goes the validity of supply chain visibility.
And lets not even talk, much anyhow, about a pallet full of cans of soup. RFID visibility is not good amongst cans. If its supposed to always be on a visible side, how do you target the one in the middle? What about mis-stacking with RFIDS hidden? Besides cans provide an example of economics. I understand that Wal Mart pays something on the order of six cents per soup can. If RFID is ten cents. Do you want to "pay" more than a can of soup, 1/24 of your cost for visibility. Perhaps not when profits are measured to much smaller decimal points.
Good luck,
J
From the been there done that dept...
The undergrad library at $Canadian_University had magnetic strips in all the books, and exit turnstiles under the mag strip scanners. If the scanner detected a strip it locked the turnstile and set off an alarm.
I peel a strip out of a book and slip it into my buddy's backpack. I distract him a bit as it get close to class time and then say "Holy kerap, you're going to be late for your lab" Buddy takes off for the exit at a dead run.
BEEEP...CLICK...WHAM! The scanner triggers, the alarm goes off, and the turnstile locks, all at the same moment. Buddy hits it at full speed, folds in half at the hips and then flies through the air like something from an ESPN highlight clip.
I snuck the strip out of his bag at our next class, and he never did figure out what happened.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
That's why the industry wants a multiple-nines read rate on tags. Missing a tag is a big deal. On some items (like a pallet of bikes) getting 100% almost every time is easy (a bike in a box is mostly air). On other items (like cans of soup) it's extremely hard. Wal*Mart is unlikely to demand that individual soup cans get tagged, but they might want cases tagged, but even then it's hard because it's soup -- mostly metal and water, two things that don't play well with RFID tags.
One thing to remember is that these companies aren't run by complete idiots. If they pay 6c per can of soup they won't demand that every can be tagged. They also won't trust that the number of RFID tags they've scanned is the number of items shipped. Instead they'll have a shipping manifest that says "300 widgets". If the RFID scanner says it found 300 individual RFID tags, then they can be pretty confident that they read all the tags and that their order is complete. If instead it says 293 they'll know they either have to try to scan it a few more times, or if that doesn't work they'll have to disassemble the pallet and figure out if there really are only 293 widgets or if there are 7 that aren't getting read. If the system works well enough that most of the time it says 300 widgets when there really are 300 widgets it could be useful, but 300 widgets == 300 tags == $30-$60, which is a lot, depending on what's actually on the pallet.