RFID Implementation
Laying out the basics of RFID technology components, standards, and regulations, this comprehensive guide explains the steps necessary to execute a successful RFID rollout.
TABLE OF CONTENTS RFID Implementation
Chapter 11: Tag-and-Ship
Companies confront the inevitability of RFID in the supply chain with a range of responses. Wal-Mart put the requirement on its 100 largest suppliers; 137 of their suppliers actually began compliant shipments the additional 37 volunteered. The volunteers did so for one of two reasons: many wanted to be on-board with a large and influential customer, and many others used the mandate to justify and accelerate their adoption of a promising new technology. Of the 100 initial inductees, several embraced the initiative as a way to drive time, error, theft, and cost out of their business processes. At the other end of the spectrum, many of the original 100 companies opted for solutions that would have the lowest out-of-pocket cost and least disruption to their existing processes. These latter companies adopted strategies that are referred to as tag-and-ship.
11.1 Tag-and-Ship Is Controversial
Tag-and-ship has numerous detractors in the professional ranks. Experts point out that tag-and-ship only represents an additional cost, with no payoff for the investing companies (other than meeting the requirements of their largest customer!). They point to today's high ongoing costs of time, errors, and shrinkage, to say nothing of losses from counterfeiting, stock-outs, misplacement of tools and equipment, misrouting of orders and management of recalls as opportunities not seized by a tag-and-ship strategy. They also cite improved handling and increasingly detailed requirements for record keeping for hazardous and controlled materials. RFID, they say, is the beginning of a technology that can address all of these issues.
Critics...
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