Wal-Mart Using RFID to Monitor Vehicles at Its DCs

Once a driver is operating a vehicle, a weight sensor linked to the VAC monitors that vehicle's cargo area—the forklift, for instance—to determine whether it is carrying a load. When the sensor indicates a load is in transit, this is indicated in the data the VAC sends upstream. All of this data translates into a valuable management tool that Wal-Mart managers can employ to improve a DC's productivity, Merlo says, whether through better supervision or management of employees, or via better allocation of vehicles.

"If [a DC has] 100 vehicles and 80 people signed onto vehicles, [managers] know 20 trucks are idle," Merlo says. "But what if only 40 of those are in motion and 40 are idle? The manager can then see that an employee is paid for eight hours a day and is in motion six hours a day, and can see how often that employee is moving a load, and then compare all of this data to the output of another employee. So now managers can compare performance and tasks and then get the industrial engineers involved, and see how they should be assigning resources to peak usage of those resources."

This could translate into reducing the number of vehicles in a DC's fleet, Merlo says, or alter how they are used. "Forklifts can cost between $10,000 and $25,000," he states, so effective management of the fleet can lead to significant operational savings. Prior to deploying vehicle management system, I.D. Systems reports, Wal-Mart used its warehouse management system to help it monitor the productivity of its vehicle operators, but the worker performance information provided by that system was less comprehensive.

According to Merlo, Wal-Mart has done extensive testing of the vehicle management system, both in a lab setting and in the DCs, and the VACs never suffer from RF interference stemming from other RF systems Wal-Mart uses, such as EPC Gen 2 hardware used for product tracking, or from existing wireless LANs.

I.D. Systems has also deployed its vehicle management system for the U.S. Postal Service (see USPS Uses RFID to Manage Vehicles, Drivers).