Impact of RFID and Xbee Communication Network on Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Every industry, organization or individual needs to be minimize their expenditure, time and fatigue and maximize their profit in supply chain. These goals can be achieved through automation by using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Zigbee wireless communication technologies, which is easily available in the market. Basically RFID technology is used for automatically tracking, locating or identifying the entities. It can easily integrate with low cost low power consumption Xbee (Zigbee) device, which is used to increase the communication range by large number of node deployment. RFID-Xbee network integrates with Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) Graphical User Interface (GUI), which gives real time information of supply chain at single control panel. The integrated communication model proves the near field inductive coupling and can be used in supermarket for item pricing, office automation, security system, and car parking. This system confirms the concept of real-time locating system (RTLS) in an indoor environment. The impact of RFID and Xbee network communication model enhance the read range of RFID reader, so that out of range items can be tracked easily without additional RFID readers. The benefit of this system is to maximize profit, reduce human intervention and minimize waste.