Wal-Mart
As the largest corporation on planet Earth with fiscal ’05 revenues of $285.2B, Wal-Mart has proven itself as the obvious logistics leader. Their RFID compliance mandate is a crystal clear indication of the tremendous intrinsic value of RFID technology applied to the value chain.

In November of 2003, Wal-Mart collected its “Top 100” suppliers together to announce that three of its Dallas/Ft. Worth area DCs (Distribution Centers) would deploy RFID tag readers at the shipping bay ports and along material transport pulleys.

Wal-Mart explained that all cases and shipping pallets that were destined for the specific DCs were required to have EPC-Class 1 or Class 0 RFID tags affixed.

Why is Wal-Mart mandating RFID compliance?

According to their own figures, Wal-Mart operates more than 3,600 facilities per day in the United States alone. Some 1,600,000 employees report to work at the multitude of facilities worldwide to service the 138,000,000 weekly Wal-Mart customers.

These numbers are mind boggling. When you add the following, it becomes more so:

Wal-Mart has 30,000 suppliers that ship to it’s 90 U.S. distribution centers throughout the United States. Wal-Mart can and has historically mandate that these suppliers hit a 30 second delivery window to ensure that the Wal-Mart trucks can get some 50 million shipping pallets delivered to the Wal-Mart stores on time.

With these staggering figures, it’s apparent to anyone why Wal-Mart needed an intelligent tracking system that operates in a PASSIVE manner. The only solution is RFID.

It’s important to point out that the cost of complying for the sake of compliance is an activity of low benefit; therefore, Packaged RFID works with clients to develop a long-term strategy that has greater visibility into the entire supply chain and with it an ROI that reaches much further than any ROI recognized as a result of initial compliance.

If your SMB (small-to-medium sized business) is one of the tens of thousands of Wal-Mart suppliers that is staring at a mandate looking for a little help, contact us. RFID compliance for small-to-medium sized suppliers is our business; and, it’s the only business we are in.

Choose the specialist. Choose RFID, LTD..