Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Joe Stocks]

RFID- Interesting from Chain Store Age

"Wal-Mart's top 100 suppliers have invested only $250 million on radio-
frequency identification (RFID) systems to meet the minimum
requirements for the retailer's January 2005 mandate deadline,
according to a report by AMR Research. The main reason for the slow
take to support Wal-Mart's RFID guidelines is that the suppliers don't
view RFID as a strategic investment, AMR says.

"There were too many hurdles to overcome in too short a period," said
Kara Romanow, research director at AMR Research. "Many of Wal-Mart's
suppliers are more convinced than ever that there is no ROI, and even
worse, consider their technology investments to be a throwaway thus
far. Because of this, they've only spent the bare minimum needed to
comply."

According to AMR, the discount retailer's suppliers each have spent
roughly $2 million on RFID, the minimum to purchase tags, readers and
software. They would be required to spend between $13 million to $23
million to integrate RFID into their applications, change existing
software and enable large volumes of data to be stored to see any
significant benefit."