NYT: Wal-Mart Slows RFID Plans, Suppliers Resist 188
securitas writes "The New York Times' Barnaby Feder reports that Wal-Mart has scaled back its plans to deploy RFID tags because the majority of its top 100 suppliers will not be able to meet the Jan. 1, 2005 deadline that the retailer demanded. Suppliers are resisting Wal-Mart's RFID demand for a variety of reasons according to AMR Research. Only 40 suppliers will meet the deadline, with two suppliers 'so tied up in a complete overhaul of their entire information technology infrastructure that they have put off attempting to introduce radio tagging.' A more pragmatic reason for the delay is that 'no one who uses the technology has systems that can reliably read the information 100 percent of the time in factories, warehouses and stores; Wal-Mart said the rate was around 60 percent in its stores.' It's hard to make the case that RFID will help track inventory when you can't reliably find 40% of it."
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:4, Interesting)
it's great and means you only need to see the people if you have a problem - that's the main reason for long queues at shopping etc - the 1% of the people that take up 99% of the time and delay everyone else.
(the books aren't actually RFID, but books are easy to stack and scan individually anyway, unlike a bag of mixed shapes and sized items.)
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:5, Interesting)
How many customers would just shrug the unintended penny purchase off? Enough maybe for someone to haul a few large boxes of the chewing gum out of the back door after the day is over?
I don't know about you, but I always watch what the clerks scan and where they put it. Not because they are always evil - they simply don't care. And I would rather bring home everything that I bought. And I would hate to pay for something I didn't intend to purchase. With RFID such visual checks are hardly possible, unless you are a genius who can scan 30 items on your receipt and instantly correlate them to what you wanted to buy.
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, the best mass use of RFID is in a direct replacement of barcodes- RFID with a range of just a couple of feet extra beats the hell out of a barcode (think of trying to scan a barcode on a big case of soda... is it on this side? no! flip it over! oof. Is it on that side? no! Flip it sideways!)
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:4, Interesting)
My point was that with bar codes the scanning speed matches human perception speed, and you can visually check how the barcode is used, and even how much you are being charged for each item (if you lift your eyes to the large display at the checkout position.)
I see no such verification possible if you just park your shopping cart at the pay station and the printer rattles out a list of 50 items that you may or may not have picked. You have to pay and move on, because this is supposed to be the "quick" line and the peer pressure won't allow you to linger and check everything in your cart against the receipt.
And if anyone suggests that there will be more such checkout positions - there will be less human clerks, that's the only sure thing in all this mess. That is bad in many aspects, primarily that there will be less jobs.
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so who benefits more (Score:3, Interesting)
Consultants!
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:3, Interesting)
IOTW, This is about pre-purchase tagging. And if they can make my goods cheaper by reducing theft/inefficiency, then I'm all for it. It's about time inventory management got out of the "hope and pray" methodology that it currently employs.
And if they start tagging my underwear inside the elastic, I can always get rid of it one way or another (a hammer might work)
As for the credit cards, shielded wallet. You know you'd buy one if they came out anyway, just for the cool factor
Slowly but surely (Score:4, Interesting)
The lead-in for this story made it sound like suppliers are standing up to Walmart on philosophical grounds, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the great promises of RFID is that the entire manufacturing and distribution chain will benefit from the single placement of one tag. The idea is the manufacturer will embed the tag right into the sole of the Nike shoes during the injection molding process. Then, the manufacturer can track the shoes through their factory, ensuring that each box contains a matching set of left and right size 11-D Nike Air TraxWalxers Runnerx X-trainerx Jordanx. The shipping company can check the manifest by scanning the containers. The trucking company can check the cargo with a scanner. The store can receive the crate from the trucker and verify that their Nikes are exactly as ordered.
Walmart's benefit is the stores won't have to pay a clerk to stick these tags on in the back room. They won't have to stick barcode labels on the products. They won't have to stick extra RF security tags on the products. They won't accidentally sell me a box with two left shoes in it (and they won't have to teach their cashiers the difference between left and right.) And they'll supposedly have quicker checkout lines by reducing scan time.
By the same token, if the chip is molded in the sole, I can't cut it out.
Ultimately they want these chips in every single product sold. Hitachi's waterproof chip is actually 1/3 the size of a grain of rice, and is intended to be permanently sewn into the waistband of a pair of women's panties. Do you want to go through all your products after you get home, hunting for tiny bumps like a dog checking for fleas?
Re:Am I the only one who likes RFID? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Slow people
2. Size of stalls. 4 of the 6 are pretty small so if you are doing a major buy you are kind of limited to going to the other two.
3. No mute for the reminder voice. If you spend too long looking for which bag to put the item it bugs you. Which automatically gets it the bird.
Otherwise we prefer it over the normal cashes as the wait is usually shorter
Sounds about as good as its self-checkout scanners (Score:5, Interesting)
Between either waiting in line for a "real" (attended) checkout lane (Which there are less and less of since cheap walmart is pushing everyone to the self-checkouts) and waiting in line for the crappy self-checkout to work, I am seriously attempting to avoid Walmart whenever I can lately. It's too big of a pain in the ass. It takes 2 minutes to get into the store, pick up the few items I need (I'm talking about man-type shopping, not female shopping where they stare at everything and take hours to pick up a few items), then stand 10 to 15 minutes just to pay for it.
I think that if it takes longer to pay for it than to find the item and walk to the checkout, it should be free. I don't have time to stand around because Walmart is too damn cheap to make it convenient to do business with them.
Compare to the elf-checkout (er, that should be Self-checkout
The issues are not just the tags themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Increasingly, recycled paper fibers are being used to make boxes in the U.S. Some of that is scraps or mistakes from the box plants, some is recovered material.
This stuff is dumped into a chemical bath to seperate the paper fibers, adhesives, inks, etc. then run through various filterations to make sure only the paper fibers are recovered. That's one big part of the problem. RFID tags aren't necessarily removed. They must be large enough that they won't slip through with the paper fiber. If they do go through, the paper will be messed up which can damage the machinery which works with it and also the tags might still be active.
Another issue is related to signal strength and resiliency. There's been work with conductive inks. The idea is to print an antenna pattern on the inside of a box to which the RFID tag is attached. This is supposed to help the tag have a greater detection range. However, regulations and technologies for using conductive ink are different than regular inks. Metallic inks are powdered metal suspended in a carrier. Those little pieces of metal aren't as easy to flush from printing machines as clay or organic-based colorants.
There are also stringent regulations concerning the manufacture of paper products used for foods and medicines. They cannot exceed very minute limits of metallic content. Little specs of metal can come from the automatic sharpening of rotary knives which happens during conversion from paper rolls to corrugated or solid fiber board. Imagine the problems which would happen from conductive inks...
Re:Roles reversed (Score:2, Interesting)
Heck, RFID is one such example.
Think of the thieving applications. (Score:3, Interesting)
Walking across the parking lot, it occurred to me that people who are Christmas shopping quite often have gifts they bought locked in their cars. So all a thief needs to speed his holiday "shopping" is a RFID reader with a directional range extender antenna. Sit it in back seat, perhaps with an accomplice/operator, and cruise up and down the crowded parking lot, pretending to look for a parking space, while actually scanning all the cars. The guy in the back can read off what each car has, and when you find one with lots of pricey gifts, they can stop and break in, or mark it down for later robbery.
For that matter, if the thieves were of more the mugger variety, one guy could sit in a parked car near a mall entrance, and scan the people walking out, and contact the mugger via cell phone telling him who to target.
And I am sure that is just scratching the surface.
Re:Bad title (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that may be. But if they are, it's because they are popular.
You might as well say people are a scourge on society because they enabled Walmart to get where it is today.
Of course, there may be some truth to that
Wal-Mart employees rejoice! (Score:2, Interesting)