RFID Journal reports that Wal-Mart sees great potential in RFID to achieve more efficient supply chains.
Wal-Mart predicts that in helping to track inventory more accurately, RFID will improve sustainability by reducing unnecessary truck deliveries, as well as by reducing customers’ trips to the store for items that were out of stock during their initial visit. “Twenty-four million people shop our stores every day. If only 100,000 extra trips are saved by having stock there,” he said, exhaust emissions would drop, benefiting the environment.
Clearly, there will be also a financial benefit in this:
But it’s not just the planet that serves to benefit from such plans. Out-of-stocks, Ford explained, costs Wal-Mart and its suppliers lost sales amounting to about 2 percent of the retailer’s entire sales—and almost half of that 2 percent is the result of inventory inaccuracies. If RFID were to resolve about 10 percent of that inaccuracy, he predicted, the retailer and its suppliers could gain about $250 million annually.