Item-level Radio Frequency Identification Research Articles

RFID technology in Retail 4.0: state-of-the-art in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods field

The well-known Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is now evolving its applications: indeed, at the industrial level, it was firstly conceived at the pallet/case level for enhancing productivity and accuracy of logistics processes, while at present the focus is shifting towards item-level tagging applications for also managing in-store processes, including the selling experience. Due to a more technological customer, to the spread of e-commerce and the need of omnichannel sales availability, also Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are subject to an evolution of the way of selling, enabled by an item-level RFID tagging. Since these technologies are connected to the fourth industrial revolution, this novelty is referred to as Retail 4.0, which is still an uncommon term among the scientific community. For this reason, this paper makes an attempt to define the state-of-the-art of research and industrial projects on this topic, and it represents the first study investigating the Retail 4.0 from a practical side, closing the scientific gap regarding this issue. Eleven documents and fourteen projects focusing on item-level RFID tagging of FMCGs are examined and categorized according to a pre-existing use cases framework, and the enabled scenarios under a Retail 4.0 perspective are identified and defined. Inventory and Life-Cycle Management related use cases turned out to be the most investigated (7 scientific documents and 12 projects), while the User Experience was only considered at the industrial level (12 projects). From both sides, the Product Integrity was not perceived as relevant (2 articles and 6 projects); similarly, scarce attention was paid to the sustainability functionality of packaging with a total of 1 scientific paper and 5 projects.

Omnichannel fulfillment and item-level RFID tracking in fashion retailing

Practitioners have long known that item-level tracking of products with the aid of radio frequency identification (RFID) has an exceptionally high potential for application with omnichannel fulfillment. Investments in both RFID and omnichannel expanded, but there was a lack of studies to assess their benefits. The introduction of omnichannel retailing is a big challenge for managers since it demands higher stocking levels due to the higher shrinkage cost. This research focuses on modeling one of the promising RFID applications: in-store merchandise tracking on item level. This model shows how a combination of consumers' response to stockout in omnichannel retailing coupled with item-level RFID tracking ensures inventory reduction, leading to higher on-shelf availability and lower cost. Thus, a modeling approach allows defining the value of the costly investment in the in-store location tracking in omnichannel fulfillment. A comparison is made between three scenarios: no-omnichannel and no-RFID; omnichannel without RFID; and omnichannel with RFID. In addition, this study examines under which parameters of costs, backlogging, brand and store switching, and other conditions one scenario could be more profitable for a retailer than another. The main finding of the study suggests the retailer's profitability could increase significantly as a result of the combined effect of investment in omnichannel fulfillment and item-level RFID. At the same time, the optimal inventory could be reduced. This study supports evidence of the higher return on investment in item-level RFID tracking of fashion products in omnichannel retailing.

Privacy and RFID Technology: A Review of Regulatory Efforts

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is rapidly becoming a common tool for manufacturers and retailers as they seek to manage supply chains and provide products and services to consumers. However, the widespread use of RFID technology also introduces consumer privacy concerns. This article reviews current regulatory efforts related to RFID, identifies gaps, calls for the enforcement of current guidelines, and provides suggestions for future research.

A mechanised 3D scanning method for item-level radio frequency identification of palletised products

The automatic, non-line-of-sight characteristics of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for identifying multiple objects are conducive to full visibility and traceability of individual product items in a supply chain. However, practical implementation of item-level RFID-based applications necessitates solving some critical issues. Among these issues, reading tag data to identify a relatively large number of individual product items, which are usually packed in batches and distributed on pallets, is particularly a bottleneck, because it affects the accuracy and trustworthiness of batch distribution of products and all subsequent logistics operations in the supply chain. Current techniques for batch identification at item-level of palletised products suffer low reading rate and incomplete tag data acquisition, rendering the RFID systems unreliable. We address this issue by proposing a mechanised 3D scanning method for identification of tagged products in large numbers to facilitate supply chain management. The proposed method requires installing RFID readers only in the X-Y plane. The readers scan tagged products in the X and Y directions while the pallet is simultaneously rotated around to be effectively scanned in the Z direction. Different scanning patterns are adopted to alleviate the problems due to randomness of tag orientation and reader collisions. As such, 3D scanning of RFID tags for item-level applications is effectively achieved without incurring much hardware cost. The performance of the proposed method is validated using an RFID-enabled gate-door for identification of palletised apparel products with item-level RFID tagging. Experiment results show that the proposed method can achieve batch reading rates remarkably higher than those reported in literature. Moreover, a correlation between the batch reading rate and the batch density is established. Apparently, the proposed mechanised 3D scanning method for batch identification of item-level tagged product items can substantially enhance the accuracy and reliability of RFID-based supply chain management systems.

Item-Level RFID Tag Location Sensing Utilizing Reader Antenna Spatial Diversity

A robust estimation procedure for sensing the locations of passive UHF radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is introduced based on spatial deployment of the reader antennas for maximum signal diversity. A signal model is developed for the received signal strength indicator seen by each reader antenna and incorporated into a mean-square error testing function. The error function is minimized at each test point in the interrogation zone to find the point with the minimum mean-square error. The minimization is independent of the tag type and orientation, making the proposed method very robust compared with other methods that are based on reference tags and radio maps. Experimental results are presented for a realistic retail scenario with multiple tagged items achieving an estimation accuracy of 35 cm. The location sensing system uses conventional UHF RFID readers, antennas, and passive tags, providing additional capability to existing item-level RFID systems. This added value will help to offset the high cost of large-scale RFID infrastructure development.

A balanced scorecard for item-level RFID in the retail sector: a Delphi study

Item-level Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) adoption is on the agenda for many retailers. However, before adopting this technology, managers need to be able to identify its direct and indirect benefits. These benefits are expected to be significant and have begun to be studied empirically and analytically in narrow, isolated segments (e.g., supply chain management). In this paper, we focus on applications of RFID in the retail sector, specifically in store operations. We have adapted the balanced scorecard (BSC) model as a decision-making framework to build a holistic model of RFID-enabled changes throughout retail store operations including marketing, merchandising, and supply chain management. After reviewing the existing literature, we conducted a Delphi study in which 10 consultants and senior managers from leading U.S. retailers were interviewed. The results indicate that benefits in the areas of merchandising and marketing may not be realized as directly as those in the supply chain, but their effects should not be underestimated. The proposed BSC model can also indicate potential opportunities for item-level RFID use in retailing and serve as a guideline for further studies.

Manufacturing with item-level RFID information: From macro to micro quality control

Abstract Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags have gained wide-spread popularity in a wide variety of application domains. However, their use in the manufacturing environment still remains at a low level. Despite maturity of related technologies, the lack of managerial understanding of potential benefits has been a major impediment to RFID tag's inroad in the manufacturing domain. In addition to their item-level identification capability, RFID tags enable local storage and retrieval of relevant features associated with each item. We consider the dynamic associated with the availability of item-level information in a mass manufacturing context, propose and develop a knowledge-based adaptive learning system for this scenario, and present related managerial insights. We use modeling as well as manufacturing process simulation to illustrate the proposed framework. Results from this study indicate that the benefits for manufacturing with item-level information increases, although bounded, with increasing variance present in the manufacturing process.

RFID Tag Cost Sharing in the Retail Supply Chain

In this research, we study some of the operational benefits of item-level radio frequency identification (RFID), and how these benefits may affect the dynamics of the retailer-manufacturer interaction. We describe a retail operation with backroom and shelf stock under the assumption of multiple replenishment and sales periods, where backroom stock is replenished according to a periodic review order-up to policy and shelf stock is replenished continually from the backroom. In this environment, retail shelves are outfitted with RFID readers to continually monitor the remaining stock on the shelves and issue low-stock and replenishment alerts to store personnel so that shelves can be replenished from the store backroom before actual sales are lost at the shelf. We are interested in the dynamics between retailer and manufacturer with respect to the cost of item-level tagging the products. Of interest is the way in which the cost of tagging the product is divided among the two supply chain partners. To do this, we investigate a supply chain in which power is distributed asymmetrically among manufacturer and retailer. This interaction is modeled using the Stackelberg game framework. From an analysis of this framework, we derive several properties of interest, relating to the appropriate division of tagging cost as well as to a life-cycle centric view of RFID implementations.

Item-Level RFID in a Retail Supply Chain With Stock-Out-Based Substitution

In this paper, we present a model to help evaluate the impact of an introduction of item-level radio-frequency identification (RFID) in a retail environment where stock-out-based substitution is common. There are two main thrust areas in this work. First, we examine the impact of RFID in a centralized setting where retailer and manufacturer are one entity. This thrust area is concerned with evaluating the profitability of RFID and exploring which product properties favor an RFID implementation. Second, we examine the impact of RFID in a decentralized setting, where retailer and manufacturer independently maximize their profits. We investigate the problem of sharing the costs of RFID, from both the perspective of tag costs and fixed costs. Our research shows that the presence of substitution at the shelf plays a major role in determining the expected benefits of an RFID implementation, as well as in determining the optimal allocation of these benefits among retailer and manufacturer. It is therefore critically important that decision makers make strong efforts to correctly account for subsitution effects when evaluating potential item-level RFID implementations in the retail sector.

Retail shelf replenishment with item-level RFID tagging

A major priority for large retailers is ensuring that items are on the shelf in sufficient quantities to satisfy all customer demand. In recent years, there has been much interest in the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track items throughout the supply chain, and in particular, for providing precise and timely shelf level inventory information. We develop a detailed simulation model to study the impact of using RFID for shelf replenishment at a retail facility. The model evaluates scenarios with and without RFID to understand the relative gains, which can then be used to evaluate relevant economic trade-offs.

RFID and privacy: what consumers really want and fear

This article investigates the conflicting area of user benefits arising through item level radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging and a desire for privacy. It distinguishes between three approaches feasible to address consumer privacy concerns. One is to kill RFID tags at store exits. The second is to lock tags and have user unlock them if they want to initiate reader communication (user model). The third is to let the network access users' RFID tags while adhering to a privacy protocol (network model). The perception and reactions of future users to these three privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) are compared in the present article and an attempt is made to understand the reasoning behind their preferences. The main conclusion is that users do not trust complex PETs as they are envisioned today. Instead, they prefer to kill RFID chips at store exits even if they appreciate after sales services. Enhancing trust through security and privacy `visibility' as well as PET simplicity may be the road to take for PET engineers in UbiComp.

Coordination and adoption of item-level RFID with vendor managed inventory

We study the affect on manufacturers and retailers of attaching radio frequency identification (RFID) tags at the item level in a vendor managed inventory (VMI) system. Our model has one manufacturer and one retailer. We first study the demand processes between an RFID system which uses continuous review and a non-RFID system which uses periodic review when shelf-space is limited. We then determine the optimal inventory policies in a centralized system and establish conditions under which the RFID system is preferable to the system without RFID. Finally, we study the decentralized system and show how the sharing of the tag price can be used to coordinate the supply chain and how it can be exploited in manufacturer and retailer dominated systems.