RFID Progress in Retail to Mid 2007

Some suppliers however, are faring better. Kimberly Clark, which supplies products such as Kleenex tissue paper and Huggies nappies is using RFID to monitor out of stocks at retail stores. Shelf stock information is something that consumer good suppliers did not have good visibility of before RFID. The products it supplies are mostly RF inert, being mainly paper based, so read rates are good enough for the company to obtain significant paybacks. And significant they are - the firm discovered that out of stocks on the supermarket shelf were about twice as worse than they had expected. They have deployed an RFID stock monitoring system to 500 stores, and hope to expand it to all stores where their products are sold, even if those stores do not yet have RFID capability. However, to date, Kimberly Clark is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.