RFID Enforcement At Sam's Club

By Greenhouse Grower staff|January 23, 2008

Wal-Mart is moving forward with its radio frequency identification (RFID) compliance program with suppliers through its 700-store Sam’s Club warehouse outlet division, according to Information Week.

Starting Jan. 30, the retailer will be charging suppliers a $2 fee for each pallet they ship to Sam’s Club distribution center in Texas that doesn’t have an RFID tag, the magazine reports. The charge is to cover Sam’s Club’s cost to affix tags on each pallet.

The next step will be item-level RFID in 22 Sam’s Club distribution centers by 2010. These programs will be easier for Wal-Mart to implement through Sam’s than through Wal-Mart, which has 15,000 suppliers that still haven’t complied with its request to tag pallets and cases headed for Wal-Mart stores, according to Information Week.

One company that has been complying with the tags on pallets since 2004 is Daisy Brand, which produces sour cream and cottage cheese. Daisy’s information systems manager, Kevin Brown, told Information Week the tags have helped the company manage the flow of its perishable products through Wal-Mart stores and ensure marketing promotions proceed as planned. Brown can track by lot number how quickly pallets of product make it to stores and when they’re unpacked using Wal-Mart’s Retail Link Web site for suppliers, since Wal-Mart has readers at its dock entrances and on its cardboard case compactors.

We’d like to know if any growers are using RFID tags at the shipping stage, on boxes of pallets, especially if they serve Wal-Mart.