Wal-Mart Pushing Suppliers For RFID

Weather Storm brings us an InformationWeek article about Wal-Mart's push for suppliers to RFID tag their product shipments. Wal-Mart seems to have lost patience in waiting for its suppliers to adopt the inventory tracking initiative. From InformationWeek: "The retailer says that beginning Jan. 30, it will charge suppliers a $2 fee for each pallet they ship to its Sam's Club distribution center in Texas that doesn't have an RFID tag. The charge is to cover Sam's Club's cost to affix tags on each pallet, says a Wal-Mart spokesman. The retailer hasn't taken such a strong-arm approach yet with the more than 15,000 suppliers that still haven't complied with its request to tag pallets and cases headed for its Wal-Mart stores. Instead, it seems focused on turning its 700-store Sam's Club warehouse-outlet division into an example of RFID supply chain technology in action, down to requiring item-level RFID in 22 distribution centers by 2010."

Can you charge a supplier $2?

[JimboFBX]

So in other words, Sams Club is going to try to give themselves a $2 discount? I think I tried that with my cell phone bill because the service wasn't as good as I wanted. It didn't work out very well.

Re:Can you charge a supplier $2?

[rkcallaghan]

JimboFBX wrote:

So in other words, Sams Club is going to try to give themselves a $2 discount? I think I tried that with my cell phone bill because the service wasn't as good as I wanted. It didn't work out very well.

Imagine you were, well you, and you were standing under King Kong's foot. If he steps on you, the obvious happens. Kong demands "a $2 discount" from you, even though you are his banana supplier.

The question of the day is, does Kong get his bananas for $2 less? For extra credit, can you explain why reverse would not be true, if you attempted to demand a $2 on Kong's security services he's providing you?

~Rebecca

Re:Can you charge a supplier $2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I understand; could you phrase it as a car analogy for me?

Re:Isn't this a good use for RFID?

[Serenissima]

Well, it's obviously NOT a good idea because it's in the "Your Rights Online" category. That has to mean there are some rights being infringed up, right? It's not like they would put in the YRO category just to make a sensationalist headline to get hits rather than actually inform people... right?

Stack them

[Fuzzums]

If wallmart wants pallets with rfid, why don't they put the whole pallets of the supplyers on one of their pallets WITH rfids...

Problem solved. NEXT!

In Bulk

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would happen if a supplier decided to get a bunch of rfid tags in bulk... that all returned the same data. Technically, they were tagged...

Re:Isn't this a good use for RFID?

[that this is not und]

I am coming to believe that YRO stands for 'rants against The Man' in some foreign language that most of us don't speak.