Mar 21, 2005This article was originally published by RFID Update.
March 21, 2005—Many may be wondering about the status of Wal-Mart's mandate now that the January 1, 2005, deadline is almost three months past. While there haven't been any officially published reports from the retailer itself, company representatives including CIO Linda Dillman and manager of RFID strategy Simon Langford have commented publicly on the progress. IDTechEx has compiled some of these stats into a report, whose highlights include:
- As of the end of January, all systems accountable to the mandate are in place.
- 104 Wal-Marts, 35 Sam's Clubs, and 3 distribution centers have RFID systems installed.
- Roughly half of the 100 mandated suppliers completed the deployment without outsourcing to consultants or integrators.
- RFID data reads are made available within 30 minutes on Wal-Mart's Retail Link site for its suppliers.
- As of March 1st, Wal-Mart has received an aggregate total of more than 23,500 tagged pallets and 660,000 tagged cases, comprising more than 5 million RFID data reads.
Despite a few hiccups, lots of moaning and groaning, and deadline slippage by a handful of suppliers, the mandate is considered a success. Indeed, the retailer is moving ahead full-steam: the 200 next largest Wal-Mart suppliers are under mandate to deploy RFID by January 1, 2006.
Here is the report at IDTechEx
