Wal-Mart-arguably the world's largest retailer with 6,601 stores and 240 distribution centers worldwide (221 are in the United States)-has been the standard bearer for RFID in the retail sector. In 2004 the company put forth a back-handed mandate to its top 100 suppliers: RFID-enable cases and pallets of goods, or look elsewhere to do business.

Rollin Ford, the company's new CIO-he was assigned to the top tech job in April-reiterated that Wal-Mart plans to use RFID, in part, to help the massive retailer achieve its goals. "As I took the helm of CIO I got a lot of phone calls; people wanted to know if we would stay the course, if we would continue to be as aggressive with RFID," said Ford, who delivered the keynote address Aug. 8 at the National Retail Federation's NRFTech 2006 conference here in Carlsbad, just north of San Diego. "We certainly will," he said.

While Ford essentially reiterated what Wal-Mart has said publicly in the past about RFID, he did shed some light on the company's immediate plans, including a focus on speed-to-shelf, sensor tags, pharmaceutical pedigree enablement and track and trace capabilities. Wal-Mart plans to invest in tags that sense the temperature of sensitive products, making sure products on the shelf are safe, rotated correctly and in the right place. The company will also look to track and trace goods, and to enable a pedigree, or manufacturer-to-shelf record, to its pharmaceutical products.
"As we look forward, tags are coming down 50 to 70 percent and readers are coming down," said Ford.

"We are pressing forward very aggressively to make sure our DC's can read [RFID] tags. We're sun-setting Gen 1 [readers], and Gen 2 is much better-it's amazing the read rates we're getting. We're keeping the price low. Our next 300 suppliers are tagging by January of 2007." Ford said that from his perspective, others in the audience considering RFID should "start soon-start now.""Start small," said Ford. "Embrace standards very passionately. Recognize this is a journey and not a destination. But you've got to forge a path to make the supply chain in this country as efficient as it can be."

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Prashanth Rai