Wal-Mart, Sam's Club Pushes RFID Further Along

Contradicting even their own reports of their own setbacks and that many vendors are lagging behind in implementing RFID in their supply chains, Wal-Mart has announced [Extreme RFID] that they will be increasing the number of their own stores using RFID to over 1,000.

As a spokesperson put it, they are moving ahead aggressively. They've had to push supplires in the past to start implementing RFID technology by announcing mandates and deadlines for compliance.

But while I'm not big on their whole project in the first place, I have to give the retail juggernaut credit,they've persisted despite setbacks. I doubt even a "little" thing such as supplier revolt will divert the steamroller known as Wal-Mart from Pushing their RFID programme Forward.

 
The RFID program at Sam's club, a Wal-Mart-owned warehouse retail chain, is set to grow significantly.

If products are not on the sales floor as scheduled, then Wal-Mart and the supplier stand to lose a significant number of sales on that item.

It's easy to say suppliers see no incentive for implementing the technology, but no doubt some of them feel that they might as well go out of business if they don't accomodate retail giants such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has also indicated that, aside from helping prepare their suppliers to be compliant, companies have to find their own ROI in RFID. Which I think might be part of the problem of adoption.

Even if Wal-Mart had a "Sam's Club" for RF tech for their suppliers, the latter are still at a disadvantage because implementing radio frequency technology cuts into heavily into the bottom line of smallest suppliers, who are already supply on slim margins for the bargain atmosphere of Wal-Mart.

Where's the ROI in this scenario?