The two most important letters shaping the future of warehouse management are WM. They stand for Wal-Mart. The retailer will have a major impact on warehouse and distribution operations of its suppliers over the next year, especially on their warehouse management systems (WMS). That's because Wal-Mart has launched an ambitious initiative to require its top 100 suppliers to provide case- and pallet-level tracking using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags by early 2005. Just last month, the retail giant met for the first time with its top suppliers to work out the details of just what Wal-Mart expects (see story page 9).
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