Best Buy's Spin On RFID

"Best Buy is just months away from using tags on some shipments to improve its supply chain and customer service. Best Buy Co.'s radio-frequency identification deployment, three years in the making, will go live in January. Nearly 80% of its hundreds of suppliers, which are responsible for generating 80% of the company's $27 billion in annual revenue, will begin shipping cases and pallets tagged with passive RFID chips to two undisclosed distribution centers and from there on to five of the 700 stores in the chain. Best Buy has big plans for the emerging technology, including RFID tagging at the item level as early as February with the participation of suppliers such as iriver America Inc., which makes portable music devices. These ambitions led Best Buy to open an RFID lab in Minnesota in 2003; it has developed 10 to 12 supply-chain and product-location applications tied to RFID and its inventory system." Source: informationweek.com