A Content Analysis for Evaluating RFID Applications in Supply Network Management

Abstract

Traditionally, a supply network is a sequence of different and multiple numbers of processes interconnected each other in order to satisfy all capacities and demand requirements imposed by customers with minimum cost to the network. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology could potentially improve supply network management by guarantying more visibility and real time communications across actors. Currently, RFID has playing an important role in coordinating information in several industrial contexts: in brief, its main advantage is to improve the quality and the speediness of information sharing among different partners in a network. Moreover, RFID capability could be effectively applied to replace traditional approaches (i.e. barcodes) to store and retrieve item data. On the other hand, RFID application is affected by some criticisms from both technological and economical point of view, as all emerging ICT technologies. In recent years, several studies have been developed in order to analyze benefits of RFID applications; few papers are focused on analyzing evaluation frameworks for RFID applications in complex supply networks. The proposed content analysis aims to support in evaluting potential operational benefits of RFID technology in different supply networks. The analysis proposed has been developed according to the well-know Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) which allows integrating business process reengineering, benchmarking, and process measurement into a cross-functional framework. The content analysis has been developed according to current literature about RFID applications; finally, it is proposed a standardized guideline for evaluating potential benefit of RFID technology in supply networks.