RADIO WAVES

摘要

Although it has been around for some time, in today's fast-paced, fiercely competitive business environment RFID (radio frequency-based identification) is fast becoming a technology that company executives and management can ignore only at their peril―whether they like it or not. As almost everyone in the retail business knows only too well, the world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart has set January 1, 2005, as a final, carved-in-stone deadline for its 100 top suppliers to begin attaching RFID tags to all the pallets shipped to its three gigantic DCs (distribution centers) in Dallas, Tex. Not to be outdone, other retailers, such as Target in the U.S. and Germany's Metro AG chain, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) have issued similar mandates to their suppliers. With RFID's well-documented potential capability to revolutionize supply-chain management, companies in other industrial sectors are nervously awaiting the call from their largest customers. RFID is not a new technology. In fact, it can be traced back to almost 60 years ago, which is when DOD introduced it after World War II to help track its flow of materials and supplies.