
Wal-Mart (WMT) has been working hard to get suppliers to join the move to deliver their goods with RFID chips. With the consumer goods and food industry notorious for slim margins, the vast majority have been slow to adopt the practice.
At this time only 600 suppliers have gotten on the RFID bandwagon; a miniscule 3 percent of the over 20,000 suppliers feeding the Wal-Mart machine.
Of course that doesn't mean a larger percentage of products aren't being tagged, because larger companies like Proctor & Gamble (PG) and Kimberly Clark (KMB) have aggressively entered into the process, and have become evangelists for the effort.
CTO of Pacific Coast Producers, Peter Wtulich, says the change to RFID has really helped their company.
He says the two ways it helps Pacific is receiving better information on how their products are moving through the supply chain, which enables the company to improve their rate of stocking the Wal-Mart stores and increases their sales.
Wtulich added the second benefit the company gets is an improved relationship with Wal-Mart.
"The biggest benefit we've gotten is visibility, but it's also put us in a more preferred standing with Wal-Mart. Ultimately that's the most important thing for us. We are doing this in advance of more mandates from other customers, and we believe eventually everything will go in this direction,"
Pacific didn't start off their RFID program by jumping in full throttle, they implemented their strategy incrementally, and to this day are still working on tagging more and more of their product. Even after a couple years the company still is tagging only a small portion of their overall product.
Wtulich recommends starting with the products that have the most competitive pressure on so from store to store you can understand why the products aren't moving as well as in others.
He also says RFID can't only be looked at as a return on investment from dollars alone, the improved relationship with your customers are worth the effort alone.
The practice will probably adopted more as RFID chip prices drop. At this time even large companies have to go slow because of costs involved.
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