New technologies: RFID makes waves as logistics tool.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BusinessBriefs - Radio frequency identification

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology--using radio waves to identify items--has been making something of a splash in the retail and manufacturing sectors as a cutting-edge way of tracking inventory and monitoring shipments right down to the pallet level. Retailers like Wal-Mart have been embracing RFID as a way of keeping an unprecedented level of control over inventory without a need for personnel to actually be physically present to read bar codes.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Wal-Mart, in fact, has asked its top 100 suppliers to have RFID tags on their shipments by the end of 2005, according to Ard Jan Vethman, principal consultant and global RFID lead, Manufacturing, Retail and Distribution, for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Vethman, who is based in the Netherlands, says that European companies have made similar requests, and that RFID "is coming on very quickly, especially in the logistics area."

CGE & Y recently polled more than 1,000 U.S. consumers to sample opinion on RFID. While more than 75 percent hadn't heard of it, those who had held generally favorable opinions. Most, the survey found, didn't realize that the technology is already being used in applications like E-ZPass toll payments and ExxonMobil's...