Australian retailer Kmart – once connected to the now defunct US retail chain, but no longer – is moving down the path of being one of the most aggressive global retailers in terms of RFID adoption.

According to a story on the ITnews.com web site, the Kmart down under is in the midst of an initiative to have all of the goods it sells to be RFID tagged by vendors, delivering what it believes will be major operational benefits – but requiring some major changes to its store shelving and displays.

Kmart operates more than 300 store across Australia. The plan is to have the tagged good be read by a robot that traverses store aisles at night, providing it hopes highly accurate inventory levels in a sector known historically for lousy accuracy stats. That will be a good thing generally, but is essential in an ecommerce world to support on-line orders, pick up at store, store fulfilment, etc.

At a recent industry conference, a Kmart manager told the audience that all items would be tagged and read by the robots in all its stores by Christmas.

Just one problem: still here in 2022, almost 20 years since the EPC form of RFID was launched, metal can still wreak havoc on performance by RFID readers – and many of Kmart’s shelved and fixtures use a lot of metal, including racks in the back store room.

What to do? How about replacing metal shelving with racks made of wood in main store area. In the back store room, Kmart is placing foam mats under the metal shelving which gives it a barrier to the metal.

But there are other challenges. Kmart says it continues to work on improving the certainty of tag reads by the robot – named TORY - as it traverses the store each night.

It turns out the first pilot of RFID by Kmart was actually in Seattle, at one of the Anko stores it operates there. But the technology was soon moved to Australia, with some modifications, as the Anko stores have a smaller footprint and lower levels of inventory.

Key to success has been getting support from companies across the globe for source tagging. While that is fairly straight forward for apparel and some other categories, others are problematic. Cutlery sets, for example, required specific vendor training on tag attachment, since the items themselves could cause metallic interference.

The project manager for the roll out, Adam Gradon, says that the deployment of RFID technology had “provided a foundation for a multi-year transformation of the instore customer experience” at Kmart Australia, which would deliver “operational efficiencies and even greater value for our customers."

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The IoT Platform in this year's (2016) Hype Cycle is on the ascending side, entering the "Peak of Inflated Expectation" area. How does this compare to the IoT positions of the previous years, which have already peaked in 2015? Isn't this contradicting in itself? Editor's Note:  You are right, Internet of Things (IoT) was at the top of the Garter new technology hype curve not long ago. As you noted, however, this time the placement was for “IoT Platforms,” a category of software tools from a good number of vendors to manage connectivity, data communications and more with IoT-enabled devices in the field.

So, this is different fro IoT generally, though a company deploying connected things obviously needs some kind of platform – hoe grown or acquired – to manage those functions.

Why IoT generically is not on the curve this year I wondered myself.

I agree totally with Mr. Schneider.

This "putting in writing" can also be used for almost anything else.  Here are some general benefits (only some) of "putting in writing":

While some feel that lean is a scam that pushes for more out of the personnel and out of the companies through reduction of waste and adding value for the customer, there are several things to remember:

1) Lean methodologies are designed and implemented to reduce time wasting, so this may seem that you are working harder as an employee.

3) Lean methods are there to make you work smarter not harder, although it may feel you are working harder.

4) YES... Sometimes lean methodologies fail! This is due to project overun or taking on too large a problem and trying to fix it all in one go and not taking the smaller problems that are associated with the large problem and fixing them first. Sometimes fixing the small problems leads to resolution of the larger problem.

 I agree that robots can replace some amount of manual labor in logistics centers.  However as you mention, the labor pool is shrinking.  We need more training programs such as the one provided by the Greater West Town organization in Chicago.   Www.gwtp.org.  (It is a program that your readers should find interesting.)

Gone are the days when consumers will wait for a retailer to have the product back in stock, those days are done. We live in the "I want it now" society and with Amazon in their pocket consumers can easily "now" it to themself the next day right from their phone.

The importance of product availability is under the microscope at all retailers as an empty shelf equals lost customers, a poor customer experience and entirely abandoned purchases.

From a sales prospective:  Our company only uses small trucking companies and gives them the business directly. We sell right to the manufacturer.   The companies we sell for have no sales force and are good hardworking companies who would usually have to rely on only brokers. We help them with appointments billing bids when needed. This year despite our companies doing an excellent job and not raising there rates we lost many accounts or were reduced significantly to brokers.

Very appropriate article, explaining the non-qualitative ranking, at least from a Supply Chain Management perspective. 

Once understood what it is not, the ranking is very interesting in terms of identifying the most successful companies in absolute terms.

The question that remains for the professionals interested in learning from the best supply chain designers and managers is exactly which are the most useful ideas and practices that can be learned from the best companies.