Wal-Mart Officials Talk RFID at L.A. Conference
Rollin L. Ford, executive vice president and chief information officer for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and David E. Kepler, chief information officer for The Dow Chemical Co., will discuss the latest advancements and implementations of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology Oct. 18 at the EPCglobal US Conference 2006, held in the Los Angeles Convention Center.
RFID is the latest generation of bar-code technology, which some say will eventually become commonplace in retailing. The technology employs microchips embedded into bar codes that can be read by remote scanners to track inventory and data. “The adoption of [RFID] technology is a strategy that offers tremendous competitive advantage, and we are moving full speed ahead with implementation,” Ford said.
Carolyn Walton, vice president of Wal-Mart, will be making a speach, and Reik Read, senior research analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., will provide his perspective on the EPC/RFID market.
The entire conference, which includes an exposition featuring about 100 companies, will take place Oct. 17–19 at the convention center. The expo will feature the latest in tags, printers, software and other products from top suppliers, including Avery Dennison, Paxar Corp., Sato America Inc., IBM Corp., Oracle, SAP and Vue Technology Inc. In addition, a number of demonstrations and educational workshops will take place throughout the event.
The focus of this year’s conference is Electronic Product Code, also know as a bar code data sharing, from strategy to production. “Our single goal for this conference is to help trading communities and industries connect, starting with sharing implementation best practices all the way to exchanging EPC/RFID information to support key business processes,” said Mike Meranda, president of EPCglobal US.
For more information, visit www.EPCglobalUS.org/conference. —Robert McAllister
