Here's an interesting little tidbit about the University of Arkansas studying Wal-Mart's deployment of RFID. From the RFID Journal:
Apr. 18, 2005�Research underway at Wal-Mart stores by the University of Arkansas may soon provide insight into how much impact RFID deployments may have in decreasing retail out-of-stocks."This is a major, major project across a large number of stores, for a long period, with data collected very frequently and across all products," says Bill Hardgrave, an associate professor and the executive director of the Information Technology Research Institute at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville, not far from Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville. "By the midsummer we should have some preliminary insights," he says.
Reducing out-of-stocks�a problem that impacts retailers and their suppliers around the world at an estimated rate of around 8 percent of items�has long been touted as one of the key benefits and driving forces behind deploying RFID in the retail supply chain. But the claim has largely been theoretical because of the limited deployment of radio frequency identification, the multiple causes of out-of-stocks and the multiple reactions that consumers have when a product they are looking to buy is unavailable.
"Reducing out-of-stocks or improving product availability is probably the single biggest area of potential consumer benefit from the use of RFID EPC," says Milan Turk, the director of global customer e-business at Procter & Gamble, a founding member of the Auto-ID Center and a supplier to Wal-Mart. "We need to use pilot activity to understand and validate how it works and how big the benefit is."
Posted by Bob on April, 20 2005 at 01:12 AM
