Saw an interesting article in CNN.COM about how Wal-Mart and other big retailers are reducing costs and improving efficiency using RFID tags on merchandise.
They have gotten their biggest suppliers to add RFID chips to pallets and cases shipped to stores. Now, rather than having people with bar-code scanners walk around to take inventory, RFID readers in warehouses can automatically tally items on the fly.
This helps not only in the warehouse, but when they move merchandise to the store, and ultimately when they throw away the cases.
According to studies, one of the costliest problems in retail is when a consumer goes to a store to buy an item, only to find that shelf empty – although replacement merchandise is sitting in the warehouse. With RFID, you get the chance to replenish items much quicker than in a “manual” fashion by looking at the shelves.
So when are we going to find RFID tags on that box of cereal, or that coke-bottle? Not anytime in the near future. RFID is still too expensive for single item marking (tags cost between 5 to 7 cents today). There are also privacy concerns regarding the use of RFID for monitoring people’s buying habits. And then there’s the security problem regarding the frequencies these tags use and the ease of interference or “hacking”.