CHICAGO - Wal-Mart last week got serious about radio frequency identification , airing plans to roll out the technology internally and coming out in support of a retail industry effort to create a global standard for radio-based product identifiers.

In a joint presentation with the Uniform Code Council  at the Retail Systems 2003 show in Chicago, Wal-Mart CIO Linda Dillman backed the council's new initiative to coordinate and speed up work on a standard data structure to be used with RFID technology. The data structure, dubbed Electronic Product Code, is envisioned by proponents as a bar code successor that retailers could use to more effectively track items they stock and sell.

"We believe very strongly in the future of [RFID]," Dillman said, adding that Wal-Mart plans to go live with a limited RFID rollout by January 2005.

"We're still defining what 'being live in January' means," she said. Wal-Mart officials aren't sure when they will make RFID support a mandate for its suppliers, but she said: "It will be a requirement."

The basics of fixed RFID

RFID consists of a tiny microchip and an antenna, often like a small, thin ribbon. These components can be put into almost any form: pressed between cardboard layers in a carton, or layered on a piece of tape or a label. The RFID tag stores a unique identification, which if Wal-Mart and others have their way will be the proposed Electronic Product Code. RFID scanners, from handheld units to stationary tunnel-like devices, transmit a radio signal to turn on the tag, which sends back its number. The code can be linked via lookup databases to servers with detailed data about the item, such as manufacturer, lot number and expiration date, if applicable.

Unlike bar codes, multiple RFID tags can be read simultaneously, without the need for line of sight. RFID tags also can identify individual items - a single pair of pants as opposed to a style of pants, for example. And tags can be designed to store additional data, which can be updated.

The Uniform Code Council last week urged retailers to make creating an RFID-based Electronic Product Code a top priority. Already, the council's intellectual property lawyers have reviewed 4,500 patents "to ensure we could bring this technology forward in an open standard," said Michael Di Yeso, the council's COO.