Radio frequency identification technology in Walmart's supply chain

Networking

Practical Networking in the Modern Business Environment

Networking architecture is vital in the organisation of any business firm in today's globalised world. RFID, Cloud Computing, Intranet Network Architecture and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are major fields of endeavour that require the resources of companies. Increasingly, all aspects of an organisation are linked via the Internet and various other technologies in ways of connectivity that we did not even imagine before.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been a vital part of the Wal-Mart Corporation's growth. At the beginning of the 1990s, Wal-Mart trailed K-Mart which at that time could negotiate lower wholesale prices due to its huge size. Part of Sam Walton's strategy for catching up was to set up a point-of-sale system. Such a system is a computerized network that identifies each item that is sold, locates the price in a computerized database. After this, the system creates an accurate customer sales receipt and stores item-by-item sales information for use in analysis of sales and reordering inventory. The strategic use of this helps Wal-Mart avoid overstocking issues by learning what merchandise items are slow sellers. This has made Wal-Mart's inventory and distribution system a world leader. For example, in 5-year period, Wal-Mart invested somewhere above $600 million IT "Wal-mart: attaining competitive," 1999) .

Wal-Mart use telecommunications to directly link from its stores to its warehouses. Wal-Mart began implementing an RFID chip-based pallet and case-level tracking system in 2005. They are require their suppliers to supplying products with RFID tags on pallets and cases. Due to the enormity of Wal-Mart's supply network, the Wal-Mart implementation is having has made RFID and a mainstream technology. It has resulted in lower cost RFID tags, ever more readily available RFID equipment, a wider acceptance of RFID standards and widespread resolutions of operational and integration issues. (Want, 2006, 26). The best advantage for all of this is of course real-time tracking of everything in the supply chain. This helps Wal-Mart track the exact number of products that they hold (Michael & McCathie, 2005, 3).

The world of hi-tech is not always smooth. The most significant IT worry for Wal-Mart's suppliers is related to the electronic price tag (EPC) system. Their biggest concern is obviously related to cost and resource requirements to implement the technologies. Problems with the price have caused some suppliers to balk. Due to this issue, bar codes will probably be around for some time to come.

However, on the pro-side, EPC networks allows products to be monitored in the store, alerting monitoring systems with specific sales details in real-time and when products go missing. This allows Wal-Mart to take anti-theft measures to prevent future occurrences. Obviously, RFID and EPC can provide theft prevention in the retail outlets themselves as well as in distribution centers (ibid).

However, the cost factor has caused Wal-Mart to have to introduce RFIDs and EPCs in stop and start again fashion in the last eight years for some product lines. For instance, in July of 2010, Wal-Mart was working with its suppliers of men's jeans and basic items (undershirts, socks and underwear) to be able to track these items using RFID tags based on a second-generation ultra-high frequency UHF RFID standard technology. This effort is part of the next generation of Wal-Mart's EPC RFID program. This will concentrate on products that have multiple stock-keeping units (SKUs). These products are a challenge to manage from the inventory perspective (Roberti, 2010) .

To help defray the high cost of the RFID technology, Wal-Mart is using its size and market share to help suppliers by leveraging the best price on EPC RFID tags. By doing this, Wal-Mart will be In this way, Wal-Mart will be aiding a supplier that only needs a small volume of tags. They will then pay less than they would pay if they purchased the tags on their own. The retail giant is not giving money to their suppliers to subsidize the cost of the tags. Rather, they are sharing in a cost-of-goods model that includes EPC RFID labels as an integral component item in the total cost of goods. In this way, costs can be better predicted and supply sources adjusted as necessary to keep down prices (ibid).

This assignment consists of four different TASKS. Answer all of them.

Design of an Enterprise RFID System

The cost and cumbersome nature of active RFID tag systems makes their integration into retail products difficult. This makes it incumbent to design any Enterprise RFID system around passive RFID tags. Also, the design of the system will be designed around the RFID transaction, that is, the reading of the tag by an RFID reader on the trip from the manufacturing facility, to the distribution warehouse, to the retail store and finally to the home environment. In other words, the front end of the system is the manufacturing warehouse. While the back end used to be the retail store, the RFID tag makes it possible to track the product to the home if there is a reader in a smart product (such as a refrigerator, for instance). The tags need to be embedded in a layer effect at the item, package and pallet level. Therefore, of equal importance in the design of the system is the placement of the tag reader (Sounderpandian and Boppana 2007 108).

While this IEEE article assumes in its design of a system that it will center around the retail environment, it raised an interesting possibility of the tag tracking the product through its use in the home if a reader is available. With the increasing use of smart appliances, we must take this into consideration in any system design. For this author's design of a system, we need to examine whether or not the back end is in the home or in the retail store. It will very soon be economical maintain RFID tags on the object, especially if it is a durable item such as an a large appliance or automobile (Konidala, Kim, Yeun and Lee 2011 112). Due to various security considerations, consumers have to be able to "kill" the tag or to keep the signal within the home and uploaded to only authorized places (ibid., 114). The consumer will likely manage this information from the smart phone in order to do something like to turn on an off appliances in a "smart" manner (ibid.,116). To further speculate, in the area of consumer goods, the consumer might be persuaded to participate in the RFID tracking to help stores in their merchandise management in exchange for rebates or coupons to get them to "sign on" to the management of the consumer information. With the consumer in mind, this author proposes a layout for an Enterprise RFID system as follows, with the back end being the home network:

General Enterprise RFID Information System Design with Home RFID Tracking-Front End (Manufacturer), Middle-Store, Back End (Home Network)

Designing a Network-Case Study

In Intranet design, finance considerations as well as interoperability have become more prevalent in priority. Since most organizational websites require the same or similar infrastructure and software, and provide similar information to the various user groups, economics of scale will demand that technologies build upon interoperability and accessibility. This would probably panic an IT professional who is concerned mainly about security. However, it is possible with regard to It architecture to abolish intrusive barriers such as firewalls that will be altered or torn down in order to provide organizations with enhanced collaboration between internal and external groups. This needs to be done while at the same time allowing for a more seamless navigation between an organization's intranet, extranet and Internet sites. This will need to be done via the use of secure authorized access by a cadre of authenticated individuals (Ward 2011). This author would therefore advocate a user-centric architecture that applies usability and information architecture (IA) techniques. Again, the key is increased connectivity (Step Two Designs 2008).

In a 2009 CMS Wire intranet contest, one-half of the entrants used Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to build the architecture of their systems (Peacock 2010). This basic Intranet software can also be used for Internet website design, so a purchase of this off-the-shelf software can be used for multipurpose use. Page architecture for the Intranet pages are similar to the website page architecture (Sanford, Drisgill, Drinkwine and Cavusoglu 2008 22). The best way to connect the 4 sites is with a VPN to seamlessly connect together the LANs with the existing central-site network because VPN provides a customised enterprise IP network service among several sites which can belong either to the same organisation or to collaborating organisations and over an IP network such as the Internet. Customisation is the key here, so a PAN might be necessary to handle technological hurdles between different types of devices, although the Bluetooth firewall security will need to be toned down. A WLAN will need to have firewall security dialed down. Existing WANS would be compatible because the WANS have a high data transfer rate, but also operates with the three layers of the OSI reference model, including the physical layers, data link layers, and network layers. This would also be the case with the MAN hybrid. In terms of speed of data in a metro area, SANs provide high-speed infrastructure to move such data between storage devices and file servers (Olifer 2007 22).

In the opinion of this author, it would be prudent to use the Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption due to cost effectiveness and simplicity (MPPE). This is a protocol for encrypting secure data across a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and virtual private network (VPN) links. It uses a RSA RC4 encryption algorithm. It also supports 40-bit, 56-bit and 128-bit session keys that are changed frequently to improve security. Also, Microsoft introduced the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) into a Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 which should be compatible with the LANs. SSTP tunnels Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)/Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol traffic is administered through an SSL 3.0 channel should provide the security for the central payment processing (Networksorcery.com 2011). On the positive side, VPNs usually do not fail if they are designed well. The failure of VPNs (especially in the security field) is caused by such bad design and the strongest algorithms can not prevent failure if there is bad design (Lewis 2007).

In the opinion of the author, the above design emphasizing speed and connectivity so the central site can connect to any remote site at any time. Additionally, any remote site would be able to connect to the central site at any time. Off the shelf Microsoft technology such as Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and Microsoft PPP encryption is corrected due to cost effectiveness. Finally, the emphasis upon speed and connectivity accommodates additional remote sites in the future as well.

Task 3 Network Diagram (Architecture Based Around Microsoft SharePoint 2007)

Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (PPT) on all Routers

New Intranet Add-On

Task-4

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Digital rights management (DRM) is a family of access control technologies that can be used by Royall international sell and securely distribute their electronic textbooks and flash cards. Due to low cost needs and the nature of their product, they will likely need "thin" as opposed to "thick" copyright protection (Doyle 2009). The movement is more now for thin copyright (Raven, 2005). They have a need for a system that can provide 24x7 service with integration to their ecommerce system and is cost effective. The ASPS Web Reader can do this by enabling the Adobe Reader as the PDF resource for displaying PDF in the web browser window. Support is maintained for all of the most current features available to Adobe Reader users such as interactive web forms (The Most Secure PDF 2011). However, given the problems and hackability of the Adobe Reader, ASPS is becoming available the available alternative that would balance off affordability against security Mills 2009). Features of ASPS include keeping the protected material from all copy and save methods (i.e. copy protection), this is restricted by user access privileges (DRM), for restricting to network or member only access and to protected from other web browsers and site grabbers involved in attacks (Artist's Scope 2011). The company is a major alternative to Adobe and provides regular customer support at a reliable cost.

If the Microsoft PDF protection and encryption in the above off the shelf option is not sufficient with regard to ASPS, then a customized, dedicated PDF protection add on is essential. While this is more expensive, it may be necessary to have access to a number of different PDF protection software packages and change them as the need arise, such as DynamicPDF ™ Designer which is an affordable, programmable, off the shelf PDF encryption that would balance cost and thick copyright protection ("DynamicPDF ™ Designer." 2012).

Conclusion

To sum up, networking architecture is vital in the organisation of any business firm in today's globalised world. RFID, Cloud Computing, Intranet Network Architecture and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are major fields of endeavour that require the resources of companies. Increasingly, all aspects of an organisation are linked via the Internet and various other technologies in ways of connectivity that we did not even imagine before. Certainly, this connectivity will become even more important in the future.