Blackberry News & Tips Newsletter
 
NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Mid-Market CIO Panel: Tips and Techniques for Improving Vendor Relationships

July 15, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

Secrets of Successful Vendor Contract Negotiations for the Mid-Market

Sept. 10, 2009, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

On this free public Council teleconference, Matthew A. Karlyn, attorney at Foley & Lardner in Boston, will share tips on negotiating tactics and new, creative contract terms to help mid-market CIOs make better deals.

Executive Competencies Assessment Tool

Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 
SUBSCRIBE TO CIO
 
Are you involved in setting the direction for your company's IT budget or strategy?

Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!

 
 
 

Tag ,You're Late

Why Wal-Mart's suppliers won't make the Jan. 1 deadline for RFID tagging

 

November 15, 2004CIO

The deadline is still six weeks away. But on most days, the head of the supply chain for one of Wal-Mart's top suppliers wishes it was two years away.

His company is one of the largest consumer goods manufacturers in the world, and by Jan. 1, 2005, he is supposed to have a system in place for attaching radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to a portion of products destined for Wal-Mart stores. But this particular IT executive already knows he isn't going to make that deadline.

Sure, he'll stick RFID tags onto just enough pallets to satisfy the folks in Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, but he's not certain those tags will even be functional upon arrival because of technical problems. And that means the efficiencies that Wal-Mart has been dreaming of achieving—the RFID-enabled transparent supply chain—may not happen anytime soon.

"We don't have a business case for RFID," says the supply chain executive, who insisted on anonymity. "Because the standards are not complete, the equipment isn't developed. And because the equipment isn't developed, I can't fulfill Wal-Mart's demand."

This executive is far from alone. Even though no suppliers will admit publicly that they may not meet the deadline, privately some say that meeting Wal-Mart's expectations is just not possible—at least by the deadline the retail giant has set. And the mission itself has become a moving target. Originally, Wal-Mart insisted that its top suppliers put RFID tags on all of the products shipped to specific distribution centers in Texas. Now, Wal-Mart is saying it expects its suppliers to attach tags to only 65 percent of their products (on average). However, several suppliers have told CIO that the percentage of their products tagged would be much less than 65 percent—somewhere on the order of 10 percent to 15 percent.

"Many of these consumer packaged goods companies are really struggling with the business case," says Christine Overby, an RFID analyst at Forrester Research. "These are very costly projects, and they're hard to do with a technology that's a moving target."

Patrick Sweeney, CEO of ODIN Technologies, an RFID infrastructure software and integration company that works with several of the top 100 suppliers, says Wal-Mart's suppliers are split into two camps: About 30 percent of them are going the whole nine yards and integrating RFID into their infrastructures now. The rest are emulating the supply chain head quoted above and practicing a method known as slap and ship.

Essentially, what these suppliers will be doing on Jan. 1 is sticking an RFID tag on only a certain percentage of cases and pallets in warehouses that are closest to Wal-Mart's Texas distribution centers. Slap and ship involves minimal data integration and leaves the retail supply chain still blind to product movement. And it will apply to only a small percentage of the products shipped to Texas.

 
 
Loading...
 
RELATED ARTICLES
 
 
 
WHITE PAPERS

The Future of Financial Reporting

Finance and accounting executives must understand, adapt to, and manage the costs associated with changes: and doing so opens an opportunity to leverage this shift to better position their companies in the eyes of the investment community.
 

Offset Expenditures with Old Switches

Learn how to unleash the hidden cash in your used equipment.
 

Managing an Offshore Development Center

Since the early 1990's companies have been searching for places in the world where they can tap into reduced development costs and a better business environment.
 

Power Considerations for Virtualized IT Environments

This paper describes some of power challenges related to virtualization - and the readily available technologies to address them.
 

The Convergence of IT and Facilities

If IT and Facilities could work collaboratively, organizations can operate more efficiently and effectively...
 

The Evolutionary Stages of the Data Center

How to avoid unplanned obsolescence in the power distribution infrastructure.
 

WEBCASTS

Managing Client Systems in the Enterprise

Keeping client systems costs under control is just one of the many initiatives IT must address when trying to manag...
 

IT Consolidation Made Easy

The Primary IT Initiative for Reducing Costs
 

Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Capitalize on Your SAP Content

After 18 years of partnership and over 3,000 successful customer deployments, Open Text has become SAP's premier pa...
 

Enterprise Cloud Computing: Ready for Primetime?

The progression toward enterprise cloud computing is happening today, as industry leaders deploy technologies that ...
 

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future

Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service? Wh...
 

Resource Alerts

Get instant email notifications by topic when white papers, webcasts, and case studies are added to our library.

 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Offshoring Risks - How Will You Stay in Control?

Improve ROI, lower TCO and reduce energy consumption.

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

Accenture: Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage. More...

Better spam protection with Postini for just $1/user/mo

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

infoBOOM! - The Mid-Sized Company CIO's Exclusive Community

Accenture IT Consulting: Logical meets technological. More . . .

The Fraudster Economy Model: Operating a Business in the Underground

Payback in 9 months with CA Spectrum solutions

The Case for Investing in Business Analytics Technology. Read white paper.

Live Webinar: Applying Business Analytics. Click here to learn more

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Developing A Dynamic, Real-Time IT Infrastructure

Maximizing the Business Value of the PC Infrastructure

Communications and Collaboration Needs at Business Organizations

Using Open Source to Deploy Web Applications

Cloud Computing: Read about VMware's compelling vision & set of products

Enterprise PBX Buyer's Guide

Secondary Market Primer: Your Network at Half Price

How Interactive Viewer Reduces the Effort to Meet Visualization Requirements

Stop Application Fraud at the Source with Device Reputation

Learn about the VMware vSphere (TM) & Intel (R) Xeon (R) Processor 5500 Series

Learn how a virtualized enterprise can help your company reduce costs

Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More?

64-page prescriptive guide to security, compliance, and IT operations.

Get Google Enterprise Search for your business information.

Accenture IT Consulting: Enabling high performance. More...

Top Five CIO Challenges

Insight makes it easy to spend your Microsoft subsidy check.

Five minute business analytics assessment. Immediate results.

Dangerous Collaboration Practices: 5 Ways IT Can Minimize Risk

Accenture: Outsourcing for uncertain times. Click to learn more.

Keep online transactions fast with CA Wily APM

Get agile IT security with CA Security Management

Trade in your old laser printer and get up to $1000 back!

Taking the Service Desk to the Next Level

Revolutionizing Enterprise Application Deployment

Why Data Loss is Increasing--and What You Can Do About It

Data Loss Prevention: A Better Way to Approach Security

Learn how to managing client systems in the enterprise.

Build a High-Performance Open Web Platform

Mid-Sized Company CIO Community: infoBOOM!

Enterprise PBX Comparison Guide

Getting Value from Outdated Networking Equipment

Top-line Performance that's Bottom-line Efficient

White Paper: 8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

Read about virtualization and consolidation effort best practices

Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure

The Global Marketplace Today: Strategies for Tough Times