RFID Performance in Supply Chains

RFID Measuring RFID's Impact on Supply Chain Performance Of the many subsystems, processes, and procedures that enterprises rely on, supply chains are the most essential for continuing profitable operations globally. The scalability of any business is directly proportional to the accuracy, clarity and value of information shared throughout its supply chains (Boeck, Samuel, 2008). The emergent role of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in supply chains is proving to be a highly effective enabler of greater accuracy, efficiency and performance (Attaran, 2007).

The more compliance and regulations there are in a given industry, the more effective RFID is becoming as an enabling technology of greater traceability, auditability and reporting of quality standards performance (Kumar, Swanson, Tran, 2009). Highly regulated industries that require intensive levels of reporting including healthcare are a case in point (Kumar, Swanson, Tran, 2009).

The same benefits of highly regulated manufacturers of auditability and traceability also apply to business models that have an exceptional level of inventory turns and require rapid inventory transactions to drive a higher Return on Sales (ROS) (Vijayaraman, Osyk, 2006). Best practices in RFID implementations across supply chains are increasingly relying on analytics and the generating of specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that reflect the technologies' contribution to cost savings and generating revenue.

The focus on measuring the total cost of RFID from the perspective of hidden costs and their long-term impact on the Cost of Capital also are being measured by best in class firms today and over the last nine years (Barut, Brown, Freund, May, Reinhart, 2006). Summary The three references that are foundational in defining the use of RFID in improving supply chain performance include the following.

Each of these references are briefly summarized and an assessment of their value to final study assessed: Source: Li, S., Godon, D., & Visich, J.K. (2010). An exploratory study of RFID implementation in the supply chain. Management Research Review, 33(10), 1005-1015. This study was based on a literature review that had the objective of defining what the major barriers are to RFID adoption and what factors need to be considered in ensuring RFID technologies are adopted.

The findings found that the lack of business case understanding was by far the most dominant reason for the lack of adoption, followed by a lack of understanding how inventory management, cost reduction and competitive advantage could be attained. What's missing from this study is first any consistently of how the literature review was completed and an alarming lack of metrics around overall performance of the cited studies. There is a lack of analytics precision to the results cited, and no real insights gained from the amalgamation of studies.

The authors need to bring greater levels of precision to the overall structure and.