A recap of Auburn RFID Lab’s annual conference

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is enhancing the operations of companies across multiple industries and Auburn University’s RFID Lab has played a key role in its advancement and adoption. That was a key takeaway from the recent Auburn RFID conference held on campus April 8-10.

An internationally renowned research institute, the RFID Lab focuses on the business case and technical implementation of RFID and other emerging sensor technologies.

The event drew more than 350 industry leaders and researchers from the retail, airline, aerospace, logistics, restaurant and data industries, and included a keynote address by a Walmart chief executive, as well as panel discussions, a daylong source tagging workshop and student-led tours of the RFID Lab facility.

“As we celebrate 20 years of excellence, this year’s RFID Conference was a powerful reflection of how far the industry has come. The level of engagement, innovation, and collaboration from thought leaders and retailers highlights RFID’s enduring impact on supply chain transformations. We are proud to continue serving as a research lab for innovation and providing real-world solutions.” Justin Patton, RFID Lab executive director

Walmart’s RFID journey

“It’s great to have an independent entity that works across multiple industries that can help us solve our problems,” said Walmart US president and CEO John Furner in his keynote talk, referring to the RFID Lab’s partnerships with multiple companies. “If it weren’t for the lab, it would still be the wild west—we’d still be struggling with some of the early problems we had 20 years ago with the physics and reader technology.”

Walmart was an early adopter of the technology, rolling out an RFID tagging program with its suppliers in 2005. The RFID tag implementation project was aided by research conducted by then University of Arkansas Professor Bill Hardgrave and his RFID Research Center.

The center subsequently relocated to Auburn University during Hardgrave’s tenure as dean of the Harbert College of Business and was renamed the RFID Lab in 2014.

In his talk, Furner described Walmart’s RFID implementation journey, which included a temporary pause around 2008 but later accelerated as research breakthroughs made the technology affordable and a viable alternative to conventional inventory methods like one-dimensional barcodes.

According to Furner, Walmart launched a large-scale implementation of RFID in its stores’ apparel departments in 2021. They knew it was the right call, he explained, following an inventory experiment conducted in a Walmart Supercenter, where teams of engineers were asked to scan everything in apparel and report on where each item was located. 

“Two and a half days in, they gave up because it [took] too long, there were too many tags, too many racks, and too many locations,” he said. “With RFID you can do an entire department in … minutes. That was the use case that told us to move forward.”

Since then, Walmart has introduced RFID technology in its tire centers and most general merchandise departments.

“We’re also launching RFID in a Find It app, so our [store] associates can use the latest signal to look for an item and know where that item was last seen,” said Furner, who oversees 1.3 million employees in more than 4,600 stores that carry an average of 120,000 SKUs.

“I’ve met associates who say they walked 25,000 steps in a day, which is great, but we’d love for them to do more value-add work and serve customers rather than spend the day walking,” he added. “We want to be America’s favorite place to shop, and we’ve put a lot of investment into servicing customers wherever they’re at—at the counter or at the curb.”

Furner expressed enthusiasm for the future implementation of RFID technology at Walmart and the company’s continued partnership with the RFID Lab, while encouraging conference attendees to share their experiences with one another.

“I can tell our team is really leaning into this experience, which is why I’m here today,” he said.

“If you have a core issue in your business and you don’t know how to deal with it, this talented team of people [at the RFID Lab] can help steer you in the right direction so you can make improvements."

John Furner, Walmart US president and CEO

“We’re all in the business—in simplest terms—of moving things around a lot so we can transact those on behalf of someone’s demand. Very rarely are any of us going through something that the other business hasn’t gone through. Collaboration in this space is really important,” said Furner.

Keep climbing: RFID takes off at Delta

During a panel discussion featuring members of the RFID Lab’s executive committee, Demetra Daniels, director of tools and technology for airport customer service at Delta Air Lines, described the airline’s use of RFID technology to track and monitor customers’ luggage, aircraft maintenance crews’ tools, aircraft spare parts and safety equipment, and cargo shipments.

Nine years ago, Delta made a substantial investment to implement RFID solutions throughout its baggage handling system, borrowing some best practices from the retail industry’s technology adoption—ensuring the right connectivity, RFID tags and infrastructure to make the transition go smoothly, Daniels said.

Today, Delta scans more than 120 million bags via RFID at 344 airports and has a 99.9% baggage satisfaction reliability rating, up from about 97% reliability before implementing RFID, according to Daniels.

Daniels expressed appreciation for the RFID Lab throughout Delta’s technology conversion journey, saying that the partnership has made the journey go a lot smoother and a lot more efficiently.

I’m lovin’ it: McDonald’s historical journey with IOT technology

Retired McDonald’s executive Sue Fangmann, a member of the RFID Lab executive committee, oversaw the US Supply Chain’s Digital strategy for the quick service restaurant company from 2017 to February 2025—which included significant RFID research and testing.   

“Within the McDonald’s system, they have a very strong culture of suppliers, distributors and restaurant owners all having a voice in decision making when it comes to game-changing digital capabilities like RFID and other IOTs,” said Fangmann.  

She shared some insights with the conference audience about McDonald’s RFID journey. 

For example, internal research and testing led the company and some of their suppliers to work with corrugators to embed RFID tags in the corrugated boxes, which manufacturers used to package their food products before shipping them to distribution centers and ultimately to the restaurants. 

The advantage of IOT is that it allows the company to achieve “labor and operational efficiency at all nodes of the supply chain,” said Fangmann, noting that in previous pilots restaurant workers spent a lot less time conducting inventory on food items. 

“The RFID Lab has been instrumental…in change management and stakeholder alignment,” Fangmann said. “They took many of our supplier councils, leadership councils, McDonald’s teams and restaurant owners through the lab to show them what they’re doing.”

During these lab visits, Auburn RFID team members demonstrated how they’ve helped partners like Walmart, other retailers, Delta and UPS implement RFID technology at scale, which built confidence among the McDonald’s executives and helped alleviate any skepticism about the technology, she added. 

From volume-driven to value-driven: UPS turns to RFID

Jon Bell, who leads UPS’s Strategic Innovation with Advanced Technology group and is a member of the RFID Lab’s executive committee, said the global package delivery and logistics provider has invested significantly to introduce its smart package smart facility initiative.

“That’s a long way of saying we are RFID-enabling the UPS network,” said Bell, who is also a member of the RFID Lab’s executive committee. “This allows us to move from a scanning-based network to a sense and respond network. RFID enables UPS to have package confidence.”

In practice, Bell explained, UPS has transitioned from manually scanning a barcode on each package before it is placed on a delivery truck—a process that took about five seconds per package—to labeling its packages with RFID tags when they are received and equipping its facilities and trucks with RFID readers.

The result is that employees doing pre-load know in real time whether each package going on a specific truck is in the right place. This technology transition has eliminated 20 million barcode scans from daily operations.

In Bell’s view, the RFID Lab under Bill Hardgrave and Justin Patton’s leadership has played a pivotal role in helping companies achieve the promise of RFID technology.

“What’s the difference between a hallucination and a vision,” Bell asked the conference audience. “The answer is it’s a vision when everyone starts to see it. Think about the RFID Lab 20 years ago. It was a sort of hallucination.”

According to Bell, Hardgrave and Patton had big ideas about the technology and through research, testing and consulting, they shaped those ideas into a vision that industry could see, invest in and achieve better business outcomes.

“Dr. Hardgrave and the whole team moved [the RFID Lab] from a hallucination into a vision,” he said. “People started having faith in the Auburn RFID Lab and you’ve heard a lot about that today. We’ve got Delta, McDonald’s Walmart and UPS up here saying, ‘We’re believers.’”

Students’ contributions

The RFID Lab provides about 100 students with opportunities to conduct research and testing projects each academic year. For example, the students help thousands of vendors implement RFID tagging on their products through the ARC program, ensuring the tags meet retailers’ performance requirements. Students then validate their recommendations through the RFID Lab’s ALEC program.

Gena Morgan, vice president of standards and technology at GS1, has collaborated with the RFID Lab since its inception, defining requirements and developing RFID standards. During the conference she praised the RFID Lab for involving students in the lab’s operations.

“The development of the students and how they’ve leveraged the students is really incredible,” she said. “What’s being done here in Auburn…everyone in this room should be proud of that.”

Chuck Lasley, chief technology officer at Dillard’s department stores, also praised Hardgrave, Patton and the RFID Lab staff.

“This entity that Bill and Justin have set up has been tremendous for our industry,” Lasley said at the conference, noting the lab’s expertise particularly in the early days proved the technology would work. “We would not be here today without that.”

Hardgrave attributes the success of the lab, which celebrates its 20^th anniversary this year, to its ability to stay focused on the business value of the technology.

“It wasn’t about technology for technology’s sake. Rather, it was about the use cases,” said Hardgrave. “Once we got past setting up the lab initially to see if things worked, we began examining how to use [the technology] to extract value… and we partnered with those of you here today who develop and use the technology.”

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Learn more about the RFID Lab.