Wal-Mart RFID Rollout to Take Longer

Filed in archive Implementation on March 29, 2004

Wal-Mart appears to be cutting back on the requirements for requiring its suppliers to comply with RFID tracking. See media reports here and here.

It seems that neither Wal-Mart nor its suppliers are ready for what can only have been described as an aggressive implementation schedule.

The first Deadline to slip is the deadline for suppliers to Wal-Mart pharmacies to include RFID tracking on shipments of drugs, which has now been changed to June.

So far there have been no formal announcements regarding slippage of the 2005 deadline for the rest of Wal-Mart's suppliers to use RFID tracking. But privately many analysts are suggesting that it will be beyond 2005 before Wal-Mart does a full-scale rollout.

This reminds me of something a colleague said the other day at lunch. She expressed skepticism at the aggressive timeframes being mandated by large companies such as Wal-Mart.

She remembers 10 years ago being part of an initiative for a multinational medical supply company where it was announced that all products would have bar-code labelling.

To this day that has yet to be universally implemented. The initiative took longer than expected due to unforeseen complexities. And while the majority of items are bar-coded today, in some cases the company simply determined that the costs to achieve 100% implementation were prohibitive.

The point is that broader adoption of RFID is coming. But I think the Wal-Mart scenario is an early indication that it may take longer than some of the more aggressive forecasts have indicated. Along the way the many complexities of implementation will surface and have to be addressed.