The DoD gets my vote for the most impressive and steadfast RFID program, even ahead of Walmart, as they consistently report significant benefits from their end to end RFID enabled supply chain management strategy. Paul Peters, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Supply Chain Integration, reported that 74% of goods are tagged at receipt and that perfect order fulfillment is as good as can be expected and material availability is at a remarkable 85%. Despite these successes, Peters pointed out that counterfeit goods are still "a looming cloud" for all to be concerned about.

The technology is undoubtedly fit to meet the needs of many industries including retail, manufacturing, packaging companies and 3PL's. These days, it seems that every potential challenge is quickly met with a solution. For example, one of the challenges that department or general merchandise retailers in particular face, as they expand RFID programs, is getting supplier tagging initiatives started quickly. In a breakout on Thursday, Larry Arnstein, Senior Director Business Development, , gave a really good presentation on how to formulate a scalable RFID source tagging strategy, accounting for the many source tagging scenarios employed today. Not surprisingly, Impinj announced technology a week before the conference that helps solve the source tagging issue. The new Impinj Monza 5 chip and STP source tagging technology can enable encoding of up to 1750 tags/minute for both inline and bulk encoding situations.

Another vendor, announced FiTS (Fashion Item Tracking System), its commercial off-the-shelf, end-to-end supply chain system for apparel and fashion businesses. Tagsys says that RFID enabled FiTS will provide end-to-end visibility from manufacturing, through the distribution center, and to the retail floor. Tagsys has already proven itself in item level RFID library and laundry systems, and has been a leader in item level pharmaceutical tagging efforts.

and are also helping retailers with item level RFID inventory tracking implementations, but due to their heritage in product security and loss prevention applications, they are particularly well equipped to help retailers with dual tag initiatives, enabling even greater asset protection than possible before. Retail feedback suggests that EAS security tags thwart external theft, while RFID tags combined with actionable reports significantly reduces internal crime.