Working Strategy of RFID Technology
Questions:
Evaluate the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Your evaluative report should include the following:
a) Briefly explain how the technology works.
b) Explain the business or technical problem the technology is designed to solve.
c) Identify the technology’s limitations. Does it create any new problems?
d) Evaluate at least one organization’s implementation of the technology.
e) Assessment of the technology’s prospects for success in the marketplace.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is an advance technology that is being used by the business organizations for various types of operational advantages. In this report, the working strategy of the technology, major limitations and the specific use of the technology by the business organizations to get the success in the target market have been analyzed.
Working strategy: Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is able to identify an individual object through the barcode reading system. This is the process of digital identification of a particular object or product. The technology works for identifying objects which are not directly visible. The facility of this technology is that it can identify many objects at a single moment. It uses for identifying a lot of objects (up to 1000) simultaneously. In this technology, readers and tags are the two main components that communicate over the radio signal (Dobkin, 2012). RFID tags are very tiny in size and require very little amount of energy to be activated and exchange information between the tags and receivers. It is not so expensive to use this technology for tracking objects.
RFID tags include two components; one is tag chips or integrated circuits and another is the tag antennas. Reader also has two components; reader antenna and the controlling software. In a basic RFID system, tags are associated with the individual objects that needed to be tracked. These are the ICs attached with the products. The tags are connected to an antenna which provides signals regarding the location, time and condition of the objects. Initially the information is stored in the memory chips contained by the tags (Landt & Melville, 2013). This information is stored in such a way, only the RFID readers are able to read the information. The tags transform the stored information whenever comes in the signal range of the readers. An RFID reader is a device connected to a computer network with an antenna that is able to send the instructive signals to the tags and receive the information from the tags (Zhu et al., 2012).
The readers use the connected antenna for collecting the information from the tags and the send the information to a computer for processing. There are different available sizes of the RFID tags and readers. The cost and energy required for the devices are depends on the capacity of the systems (Chae et al., 2013). Developing a RFID framework requires numerous on-screen characters and a wide range of segments. Ordinarily, introducing a framework requires essential equipment including tags, tag antennas, tag memory chips, reader and reader antenna and in addition reader control and application programming, and arrangement suppliers to assemble it all.
Components of RFID System
Issues solved by the technology: RFID technology is capable of enhancing and protecting the lives of the consumers and changing the way of conducting business operations of the business organizations. The main issue resolved by this technology is the identification and tracking or monitoring the physical world entities with accuracy. RFID is able to tell the place, time even the conditions of the objects which are tracked by the system. A globally interconnected network can be formed by this technology and can be used as an information system by the business organizations (Zhong et al., 2013). The business organizations face high level of challenges inventory management and ware house maintenance. Another major issue faced by the modern business organization is the efficiency of the product delivery form the suppliers or to the custmers. These two operations are very vital for keeping the business operations ongoing. These issues can be resolved by RFID technology. The business organization can use the RFID tags for tracking the place and time of the delivery vehicles or personnel for ensuring the effective delivery of the products (Wang & Katabi, 2013).
Limitations: Conflict of interest is a major limitation of using the RFID tags in delivery or supply of the products. The partner companies which are involved in the supply chain management of the business organizations may not be interested about the use of tracking devices in their business operations. Sometimes it may be unethical as the tags are able to provide lots of important information (Schneider et al., 2012).
Another limitation of the RFID technology is the cost. Although the components’ of the RFID system development are not so high as per the standard of the electronic products industry, but not so cheap for using any kind of tracking. Due to this reason, use of the technology is limited to the costly products only (Lu et al., 2013).
Signal collision is a technical limitation of the technology. The RFID systems are able to read information from many devices at the same time. This may be the cause of signal collision which may further results in false information storing in the system. Due to this fact, the user organization may face huge problems in their decision making system. Technology is updating and the developers are trying to resolve this issue in the latest systems.
Another major limitation of this technology is the frequency. Choice of proper frequency is very important for the efficient use of the RFID systems. The optimal choice of the frequency is dependent on the transmission mode, nature of the tagged objects and surrounding environment and international standards. Proper analysis of these factors is vital for the selecting the right frequency selection. If the frequency is chosen wrong, then the total system may face he difficulties in the operations (Ramanathan et al., 2012).
Example of organizational implementation: At present, the use of RFID technology can be seen in every type of business organizations. The retail sector is getting high level of advantages through the use of the RIFD technology. Zara is one of the most popular retail companies in the global market. It uses the RIFD technology in the inventory management and some other operations (Kong, 2015). The examples of the particular use of this technology are:
- Automate the asset tracking system and inventory management in the healthcare organizations, retail and manufacturing business industries.
- Identification of the source of the raw materials for ensuring the quality of the products.
- Enabling the intelligent recall of the products which are defective or dangerous to the customers like defective gadgets or expired medicines or food products.
- Prevention of the use of counterfeit products in the supply chain management in the manufacturing industry.
- Improving the shopping facilities for the consumers in the retail sector with less amount of out-of-stock items and smart system for return strategy (Curtin, Gaffney & Riggins, 2013).
- Provide more efficient distribution channel and more visibility to the supply chain management for reducing the cost of the business operations.
- Prevention of business revenue lost due to theft or false accounting of products.
- Wirelessly configure, lock and unlock the electronic equipments.
- Use to control the products in such areas where direct participation in difficult or not possible.
Issues Solved by RFID Technology
It can be said that whatever the application is that is not the important fact, the technology is able to enhance the efficiency of the operations of the business organizations (Schneider et al., 2012). It reduces the stress of the manual handling of the operations and improves the visibility and traceability of the business operations.
Way of getting success in market place: At the present situation, the market place is facing intense market competition because there are a lot of similar organizations which are operating their business operations over similar products and services. The key behind the success in this highly competitive market is to achieve the sustainable competitive advantage. In order to get the competitive advantage, the business organizations need to be highly efficient in their business operations (Curtin, Gaffney & Riggins, 2013). This can be done by using the innovative technologies. Using RFID the business organizations are able to track the products which makes the total supply chain management process much easier and efficient. This can be seen as a great benefit to the business organizations to get success in their target market (Ray, Chowdhury & Abawajy, 2013). In order to be succeeded in the market competition, the business organizations need to conduct a good market research, the RFID tags can be used to conduct the market research which can make stronger base for the business operations. The common people of the present world like the automotive platform of shopping and efficient delivery of the products (Al-Kassab, Thiesse & Buckel, 2013). Using the RFID technology in the inventory management and delivery management system of the business organizations, they are able to get higher level of improvements in the area of the customer satisfaction which further results into greater success in their business operations. Zara is an innovative retailer which has used the RIFD technology for increasing the efficiency of their business operations. The company has used the technology mostly in the area of the inventory management system. They have succeeded to reduce the time required for the inventory management on their outlets to 15% of the time they used to take for this. This is helping the company to get higher level of success in their business operations (Kong, 2015).
Conclusion
In the technology oriented market, the business organizations need to adopt nigh tech solutions for achieving the competitive advantages. RFID is able to provide advantages to the business organizations to efficiently handle the business operations. The RFID systems can be used for keeping track of the products in the whole supply chain management of the business organizations. In order to get the desired level of success in the business operations, the organizations need to skillfully overcome the challenges.
References
Al-Kassab, J., Thiesse, F., & Buckel, T. (2013). RFID-enabled business process intelligence in retail stores: a case report. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 8(2), 112-137.
Chae, H. J., Salajegheh, M., Yeager, D. J., Smith, J. R., & Fu, K. (2013). Maximalist cryptography and computation on the WISP UHF RFID tag. InWirelessly Powered Sensor Networks and Computational RFID (pp. 175-187). Springer New York.
Curtin, J. P., Gaffney, R. L., & Riggins, F. J. (2013). Identifying business value using the RFID e-Valuation Framework. International Journal of RF Technologies, 4(2), 71-91.
Dobkin, D. M. (2012). The RF in RFID: UHF RFID in Practice. Newnes.
Kong, E. L. (2015). Cannibalization effects of products in Zara’s stores and demand forecasting (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Landt, J., & Melville, M. G. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,432,255. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Lu, M. T., Lin, S. W., & Tzeng, G. H. (2013). Improving RFID adoption in Taiwan’s healthcare industry based on a DEMATEL technique with a hybrid MCDM model. Decision Support Systems, 56, 259-269.
Ramanathan, R., Bentley, Y., & Ko, L. W. L. (2012). Investigation of the status of RFID applications in the UK logistics sector. Logistics & Transport Focus.
Ray, B. R., Chowdhury, M., & Abawajy, J. (2013, July). Critical analysis and comparative study of security for networked RFID systems. In Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD), 2013 14th ACIS International Conference on (pp. 197-202). IEEE.
Schneider, C. W., Tautz, J., Grünewald, B., & Fuchs, S. (2012). RFID tracking of sublethal effects of two neonicotinoid insecticides on the foraging behavior of Apis mellifera. PloS one, 7(1), e30023.
Wang, J., & Katabi, D. (2013). Dude, where’s my card?: RFID positioning that works with multipath and non-line of sight. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 43(4), 51-62.
Zhong, R. Y., Dai, Q. Y., Qu, T., Hu, G. J., & Huang, G. Q. (2013). RFID-enabled real-time manufacturing execution system for mass-customization production. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 29(2), 283-292.
Zhu, X., Mukhopadhyay, S. K., & Kurata, H. (2012). A review of RFID technology and its managerial applications in different industries. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 29(1), 152-167.
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