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If it’s good enough for Wal-Mart, it’s good enough for us. Karl Paepke, vice president of operations at Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, came to that realization while researching the potential benefits of RFID technology in early 2004. For many suppliers, placing EPC (Electronic Product Code)-compliant RFID tags on pallets and cases to meet Wal-Mart’s mandate is an inconvenience. For these companies, RFID is simply a cost they must absorb in order to continue doing business with Wal-Mart and other customers that have set similar mandates. But instead of viewing RFID from the perspective of a supplier required to meet a mandate, Jack Link’s looked at the technology from Wal-Mart’s point of view. Wal-Mart, which required its top 100 suppliers to ship RFID-tagged shipments to three of its distribution centers at the start of the year, believes it can cut costs and improve efficiency by using RFID to track products. Jack Link’s realized it had the potential to achieve similar results with the technology.