When I entered the military in 1971, my father, a World War II veteran, had one piece of advice: never volunteer. So, it struck me as odd that when retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. conscripted its top 100 suppliers into its radio frequency identification (RFID) initiative, another 26 companies volunteered to comply with the 2004 deadline.

There must be more than the obvious business reasons behind this act of supply chain patriotism. Let’s dispense with those up front.

First, Wal-Mart will require all suppliers to comply by 2006, so why wait?

Second, if you join early and Wal-Mart is considering a choice between a supplier who is RFID-compliant and one who is not, you may run less risk of being outbid for the business.

Third, by all accounts, many suppliers have seen cost savings and other benefits from other Wal-Mart initiatives, so why not start seeing those benefits sooner rather than later?

Speaking of the Wal-Mart initiative, Sue Hutchinson, product manager for the Uniform Code Council, says quite simply, “It’s going to advance the industry.” Wal-Mart, she explains, has been very active in the automatic identification community working with the standards organizations and technology suppliers to understand the capabilities and limits of the technology and its application.

With an estimated 122 RFID protocols out there, the landscape resembles the early days of bar coding. Analysts at AMR Research Inc. suggest Wal-Mart’s top 100 suppliers will spend $2 billion on the RFID initiative. A proprietary standard or a wrong choice in this case can be very costly to Wal-Mart and to its supply chain.

This isn’t the first time Wal-Mart has been deeply involved in industry practices and standardization. Wal-Mart was “the first company that came up with [the practice of] collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR), and when they found it was a winner, they went to the Voluntary Inter-Industry Commerce Standards (VICS) committee and worked to make it an industry practice rather than making it proprietary,” says Joe Andraski, vice chairman of the VICS CPFR committee. VICS worked with retailers, their suppliers and academics to perfect its nine-step process model roadmap to make CPFR accessible to a general audience.

The U.S. Department of Defense has elected to follow Wal-Mart’s lead on RFID. But even with all of this momentum to reach an acceptable standard quickly, there is a tremendous amount of work yet to do. Patricia Meisner, president and CEO of Red Tail Solutions, admits that electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions providers have their work cut out for them linking to warehouse management systems and also accommodating RFID tags. So, the development work isn’t complete, and there are plenty of opportunities to volunteer.

I guess I have to modify my father’s advice. If it’s the right mission and the right team, well equipped and properly lead, it’s in your best interest to volunteer. So, let me see a show of hands: Who wants to join the next major campaign for logistics efficiency?

Perry A. Trunick
executive editor