Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Friday that it has begun a previouslyplanned trial rollout of RFID tags at eight sites in Texas. Bothcases and pallets at Wal-Mart’s Dallas-Fort Worth distributioncenter and at seven retail stores will be scanned for passive,embedded RFID tags. The merchandise at first will be distributedonly within Texas and in parts of Oklahoma, but later it may fanout to other parts of the country, the retailer said. By January2005, Wal-Mart expects its top 100 suppliers to begin embeddingRFID tags – small chips that can be scanned with electronic readersfor tracking inventory – for use in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.Wal-Mart says its goal during the trial run is to track 21 products(with 100 percent accuracy) out of the thousands that pass throughthe company’s warehouses. The tags will be checked at thedistribution center and rechecked at the stores to make sure theproducts are properly stocked.read the full article