Inventory Management, Shrinkage Concerns, and Related Corrective RFID Strategies

RFID-based solutions are essential inventory management tools, supplying more information than the standard barcode that help eliminate the potential for inventory stock-outs and reducing theft-based inventory shrinkage. A relatively detailed discussion of these techniques is included in this chapter by addressing some of the many concerns of inventory shrinkage. As is evident from the empirical section of this chapter, although RFID may be perceived as a cutting-edge business solution, RFID systems and its implementations still prove to be a difficult process to implement and achieve. Many companies have avoided the idea of introducing RFID systems, possibly due to being overwhelmed with the new technologies. However, its impacts on reducing inventory shrinkage are fairly clear and decisive.

RFID Technology in Business and Valuation Methods

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) became one of the major disruptive innovations that have attracted the attention of researchers and practitioners around the world. Recognizing the business value of RFID, firms are rapidly adopting RFID technology in a wide range of industries including hospitals, logistics, manufacturing, and retailing. Since the adoption of RFID largely depends on the perceived potential benefits and the investment costs, firms need to carefully assess every intangible and tangible benefits and costs to make sure the adoption is financially, operationally, and strategically justifiable. This chapter provides a literature review on RFID applications in business and valuation methods for RFID and presents an analytical evaluation model for RFID investment for manufacturing and retail organizations. Finally, this chapter concludes with the implications of the chapter for academics and practitioners.

Operational Strategies Associated with RFID Applications in Healthcare Systems

An effective information system is essential for a business or industry to be successful in today's highly competitive market. Perhaps the most compelling case for RFID-embedded technologies in the healthcare field has been increased efficiency in supply chain performance measurements, which generally consist of financial and non-financial indicators. Many research studies have assumed that these efficiency measures are transferrable in the medical services field. Such optimism is fuelled by the expectations that such supply chain measures will result in equally impressive results in the healthcare field. Although this transfer may be somewhat flawed and imperfectly applied, research has verified certain elements of operational optimism. There are still a number of technical, ethical, and legal issues or hurdles that surround RFID applications in the healthcare industry that must be successfully overcome. However, few can successfully argue against freeing hospital staff from the routine duties associated with traditional inventory so that they may be free to serve patients. With recent governmental regulations and the concern for increased access to universal medical care and its astronomical costs, these issues need to be addressed.

Data Management Issues in RFID Applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) refers to wireless technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify items within a certain proximity. It is being widely used in various applications, but there is reluctance in the deployment of RFID due to the high cost involved and the challenging problems found in the observed colossal RFID data. The obtained data is of low quality and contains anomalies like false positives, false negatives, and duplication. To enhance the quality of data, cleaning is the essential task, so that the resultant data can be applied for high-end applications. This chapter investigates the existing physical, middleware, and deferred approaches to deal with the anomalies found in the RFID data. A novel hybrid approach is developed to solve data quality issues so that the demand for RFID data will certainly grow to meet the user needs.

An Integrated Development Environment for RFID Applications

In recent years we have witnessed a proliferation of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) middleware systems and projects (including several open source projects), which are extensively used to support the emerging wave of RFID applications. Some of the RFID middleware projects come with simple tools, which facilitate the application development, configuration, and deployment processes. However, these tools tend to be fragmented since they address only part of an RFID system (such as the filtering of tag streams and/or the generation of business events). In this chapter, the authors introduce an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for RFID applications, which addresses multiple parts of an RFID application, while at the same time supporting the full application development lifecycle (i.e. design, development, deployment, and testing of RFID applications). The introduced IDE comprises a wide range of tools, which have been implemented as modular plug-ins to an Eclipse-based environment. The various tools enable application development, deployment, testing, and configurations over the middleware infrastructure established by the AspireRFID (AspireRFID Consortium, 2013), and their evaluation has proven that they can significantly ease RFID application development.

Can Near Field Communication Solve the Limitations in Mobile Indoor Navigation?

The navigation ecosystem is rapidly changing. Indoor navigation has attracted attention with the introduction of mobile devices into the market. Although mobile devices are used more often for outdoor navigation, they have opened up opportunities for indoor navigation proponents. Near Field Communication in indoor navigation is still in its exploratory stage. Despite an increase in the variety of indoor navigation research, challenges remain in designing a framework that is neither complex nor expensive. NFC is a novel method of navigating in indoor environments. Providing an overview of its benefits and usefulness compared with existing indoor navigation technologies is the subject of this chapter.

Green Characteristics of RFID Technologies

Logistics is an integral part of the supply chain. Many logistics service providers have acknowledged that if they want to operate more efficiently and responsively, they must adopt technologies that help manufacturers, warehouses, and retailers to communicate with each other more efficiently. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been identified as an important application among many logistics technologies and is increasingly gaining both practitioners' and researchers' attention. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the factors affecting logistics service providers' intentions to use RFID technology, with special emphasis on its environmentally friendly green characteristics. The theoretical perspective diffusion of innovations is used for the purpose. The data is collected using a questionnaire survey among the UK logistics companies. The analysis shows that observability of green characteristics positively influences the intention to use RFID.

Meta-Data Alignment in Open Tracking and Tracing Systems

Many supply chains require open tracking and tracing systems. In open tracking and tracing systems, attributes of objects are not known beforehand, as the type of objects and the set of stakeholders may evolve over time. In this chapter, a method is presented that enables components of tracking and tracing systems to negotiate at run time what attributes may be stored for a particular object type. Components may include scanning equipment, data stores, and query clients. Attributes may be of any data type, including time, location, status, temperature, and ownership. Apart from simple attributes, associations between objects may be recorded and stored (e.g. when an object is packed in another object, loaded in a truck or container, or assembled to be a new object). The method was developed in two European-funded research projects: TraSer and ADVANCE.

CostRFID

Although many firms have initiated RFID projects, they often face significant difficulties in integrating RFID systems into their existing IT landscape. One such difficulty is the upfront estimation of the cost of the RFID integration project. This chapter addresses this issue by using a design science approach to provide a cost calculation for RFID integration projects. Drawing from literature in the fields of information systems and RFID, software engineering and supply chain management, the authors develop the cost calculation method that is then implemented in a prototype. The prototype is developed and evaluated in an iterative fashion using focus groups, RFID experts, and the cognitive walkthrough method. The authors contribute to theory by proposing a new cost calculation method to estimate the costs of RFID integration projects. Practical implications include a more accurate estimation of the cost of integrating RFID systems into the existing IT landscape and a risk reduction for RFID projects.

Item-Level RFID for Retail Business Improvement

This chapter proposes an item-level RFID-enabled store management system to help improve retail business. The system adopts an integral design approach to exploit RFID and the e-pedigree established for anti-counterfeiting and tracking of product items in a supply chain. Various modules, such as back-store inventory, smart shelves, interactive mirrors and fitting, and self-checkout services, can be subsequently implemented for retail operations and management. Features for anti-counterfeiting and individual customer marketing can also be incorporated to enhance brand image and customer experience. Moreover, intelligent algorithms may be integrated to mine useful information, such as the sales history of products and the shopping behaviour of customers from the data captured by the RFID devices to facilitate business decision-making and proactive individual marketing. As such, the efficiency of store operations and the overall retail business can be expected to improve substantially. The chapter presents the design approach of the proposed system and discusses some implementation issues, exemplified by two basic applications: (1) track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting to prevent injection of faked products into the back-store inventory and (2) smart product collocation to promote individual customer marketing and cross selling.