Telxon Technology

Walmart, as the largest company and retailer in the world, is my central focus at this point when analyzing the technology used for inventory management.  Again, with 7,000 stores world wide and inventory from over 60,000 American suppliers, the old phrase makes sense, if your IMS can make it here, it can make it anywhere.

Since 1992, the central piece of this IMS within Walmart stores has been the Telxon.  This wireless barcode scanner is carried my many associates in the front and back of store and allows access (and editing) to a wealth of item data.  From the article Fly on the Wal, Charles Platt describes the interaction of associates and Telxon in this way:

“The Telxon, pronounced “Telzon,” a hand-held bar-code scanner with a wireless connection to the store’s computer. When pointed at any product, the Telxon would reveal astonishing amounts of information: the quantity that should be on the shelf, the availability from the nearest warehouse, the retail price, and (most amazing of all) the markup.
All of us were given access to this information, because - in theory, at least - anyone in the store could order a couple extra pallets of anything, and could discount it heavily as a Volume Producing Item (known as a VPI), competing with other departments to rack up the most profitable sales each month. Floor clerks even had portable equipment to print their own price stickers. This was how Wal-Mart detected demand and responded to it: by distributing decision-making power to grass-roots level. It was as simple yet as radical as that.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_K8hD47GcZBkh1v3SjNYldI;jsessionid=8AFCC4131F0B0090C7D8828398A220B7

Giving “grass-roots level” authority to associates to change price and affect ordering would seem a risky business proposition but, the success of Walmart shows it can be successful if managed properly.  From an inventory management perspective, what must have been an enormous investment in the early 1990’s in Telxon technology certainly appears to have paid off, and could be used as a reference by other businesses when considering RFID options.