Wal-Mart and the U.S. Department of Defense have told suppliers "you will use RFID tags."
DOD learned its supply chain lesson from the first Gulf War. Prior to the start of the war thousands of tons of supplies, from bullets to bandages were shipped to Kuwait. However the military frequently could not readily identify everything on a pallet or in a container, nor where it was when needed. Those "lessons learned" resulted in use of RFID tags for equipment and supplies shipped during the recent War with Iraq. The military now had readily available "visibility" of supplies in the pipeline-real time what, where and how much.