RFID: The Kimberly-Clark Experience

Good article on the current state of RFID and work ongoing at Kimberley-Clark, Best Buy, DHL and Wal-Mart. Some details on KC's work with display tracking, an example of RFID tagging focused to clear business problems.

" ... One Wal-Mart supplier, consumer goods company Kimberly-Clark, is about to expand to more products a pilot that used RFID to monitor promotions of its Depend adult diapers. The company created fully stocked promotional displays of Depend and put RFID tags on the displays before shipping them to Wal-Mart and Target, another RFID pioneer. Using software OATSystems developed with Kimberly-Clark's input--and which the vendor began selling last week--the consumer goods company could see on a color-coded dashboard how many stores received the product in the stockroom and how many put it on the store floor.

That setup helps Kimberly-Clark know if the displays are on the floor at the same time its ads run. "We back up promotion displays with TV advertising, so you spend a lot of money trying to get consumer awareness of them," says Mike O'Shea, director of corporate AutoID/RFID strategies. The feedback wasn't good: Kimberly-Clark learned that just 56% of stores executed the promotion on time, and those that were late reported lower sales. It used the information to work with the retailers and has since been able to increase on-time execution of Depend store promotions to 75%.

It's these types of focused applications that will work for RFID, O'Shea says. Although no one was naming names, last week's RFID World conference was rife with talk of Wal-Mart suppliers that have spent considerable money on RFID, are collecting loads of data, yet haven't figured out what to do with it. "They got caught up in the hype of the technology and lost focus," says O'Shea. "You will get those wins, and we've proved that." ...."