This article was originally published by RFID Update.
November 3, 2004—Giant German retailer Metro issued a mandate to its top 100 suppliers that required them to RFID tag shipments of goods going to the company’s 270 stores throughout Germany and Europe. The deadline for complying by the mandate? November 2004. But now that the date has arrived, only 20 of the mandated 100 have actually started shipping tagged goods. Does this mean that we can predict similar under-compliance for Wal-Mart’s January deadline? Probably not. Despite some speculation to the contrary, Retail’s reigning king has insisted on more than one occasion that the vast majority of its suppliers are on track to meet the deadline. And, indeed, 37 additional Wal-Mart suppliers who were not in the “Top 100” went out of their way to volunteer early compliance participation. But this news from Metro, combined with Alien Technology’s announcement last month that it is sold out of the Class 1 RFID tags required by many suppliers rushing to comply with retailer mandates, can’t help but cast doubt on some of the optimistic assertions.
Read the article at ComputerWeekly.com
