Wal-Mart’s Ongoing RFID Push
Written by Evan SchumanJuly 4th, 2007
Wal-Mart this week continued its campaign to push RFID throughout the industry, with this powerful Money Magazine story adding new some details.
The piece has Myron Burke, strategy manager of Wal-Mart’s store innovations and operations group, discussing a recent visit to a Wal-Mart equipped with on-floor RFID tagging. He reported that out-of-stock signs were discovered in 66 of about 200 total product categories within its electronics section. “With RFID, Wal-Mart management can now alert those store associates to fix the problem spots,” the story said.
-Dan Stiel
July 4th, 2007 at 7:25 am
The industry average for out-of-stock items is around 8%. Wal-Mart’s discovery of 66 out of 200 comes to 33%. Wal-Mart appears to have a major problem with their system for replenishing stock. Their out-of-stock rate is more then four times the industry average.
Until this problem is addressed, no amount of amount of RFID tags will solve the problem.
July 6th, 2007 at 9:48 am
You can certainly solve this problem with less expensive technology that is just as effective……..like using perpetual inventory and a BPM solution that provides alerts to merchants,operation and store management.
July 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
8.3% industrial average for OOS refers to SKU level OOS. The article states “66 of about 200 total product CATEGORIES” are found to have OOS signs, and this is not surprising. Statistically, 8.3% of the SKU in every categories are prone to OOS. Furthermore, demand for SKUs in the electronics section are less predictable, making it more prone to OOS.