Wal-Mart's CIO on RFID

Filed in archive on September 13, 2004

InformationWeek has a must-read interview with Wal-Mart's CIO, Linda Dillman, on the topic of RFID. It's a fast read and full of interesting points. Some of them are a little surprising, including this illuminating little gem:

InformationWeek: Are people making too much out of RFID?

Dillman: Yes. Our RFID team, until about three months ago, was five people. We almost doubled Simon Langford's team by adding four people. [Langford is Wal-Mart's global RFID strategy manager.]

Now, this comment is so revealing because InformationWeek sent four reporters/Editors to interview the CIO. In other words, there were almost as many media covering this one RFID story for a single publication, as there were employees within Wal-Mart working on RFID until this summer.

The sense you get from reading the article is that Wal-Mart and its CIO keep getting surprised by the incessant attention heaped on their mandate. Ms. Dillman also makes it clear that the mandate is often miscommunicated by third parties and its impact has been blown out of proportion.

Does all this suggest that RFID might be just a little overhyped right now?