This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 7, 2005—A new report from consulting firm Incucomm of Dallas, Texas, represents the most recent hard data on the progress of the Wal-Mart RFID mandate, whose January 1st deadline has passed but not yet yielded reports of either strong “success” or “failure” verdicts. The report’s most interesting finding is that supplier resistance to Wal-Mart’s mandate was far less than what had been widely reported: only 4 of the “Top 137” (the collective title of the 100 mandated Wal-Mart suppliers plus 37 additional suppliers that voluntarily participated) made “essentially no effort to comply.” This statistic does indeed fly in the face of much press, including a New York Times article from just two weeks ago.
Incucomm also found that Wal-Mart suppliers spent far less on mandate compliance than experts predicted they would. While this under-spending squares with a recent report from Boston-based AMR Research, the reports disagree about the actual amount; Incucomm estimated an average half-million dollar spend per supplier, whereas AMR calculated between $1 and $3 million.
The report’s executive summary can be read free here (PDF)
