Business Information System For RFID Technology Essay.

RFID Working Principle

Discuss about the Business Information System for RFID Technology.

RFID Working Principle:

RFID Technology is the latest technology which consists of an antenna and a small chip for the storage of the information’s. The chip is capable of carrying up to 2000 bytes of data. This is a wireless communication technology which consists of barcode and PIN that can be used to uniquely identify certain object or product. A RFID system is consists of three different parts a tag, a reader and a host computer. It’s a cost effective and widely used technology due to its benefits. In some form of packaging, it contains semiconductor and antennas which will be used to locate, track. This can be uniquely identified by reader and host pair, when applied to any object or any person then we can simply track. RFID comes into different forms in which some come with paper labels (Fig. 1.1) and in some cases its incorporated in the walls of the containers (fig 1.2).RFID Technologies has three different parts which are stated , the tag and the reader communicates with each other through radio waves. The tags can consist of different information’s like product description, the location of the product, price, configuration instruction and much more. There are mainly two types of tags Active and Passive tags. RFID tags are said to be Active tags if they have their own source of energy like a battery (Want, 2006). 

Fig 1.1 (Source: Internet)

Fig 1.2 (Source: Internet)

The technology was first used by the Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense (DoD), in the year 2003, Wal-Mart has incorporated this technology to enable pallet-level tracking of the products. The supplies also adopted this technology to tagging pallets and the cases with the Electronic Product Code label. This is mainly done to avoid the different business problem as well as the technical problem associated with the companies. Adopting this technology has benefitted them with increased deliveries, lesser cost in supply chain management, Low labor cost. These can help an organization to cut down the extra effort and cost related with the function and management of the organization (Hunt, 2007).

 The RFID notion or bar is mainly designed to solve the complex problem which occurs during the process and during the management of the supply chain and tracking of the objects. It reduces the occurrence of the out of the stock situation in supermarkets, with the RFID technology the companies and supermarkets can track the position of stock, half finished products,  the transportation as well as the sales of the goods. This can help the company to avoid out of the stock situation (Ames, 2004). Earlier this was a tough task for the retail companies to track and identify each of the products but after the involvement of the RFID Technology, this becomes easy to take. Technological problems such as complex security problems, the RFID is well suited to improve the Homeland security by the effective tracking system. This can be used for the identity management and location determination system by tracking the objects. This can be used to track and protection of the border and transportation system. This is also useful in maritime security, about 90% of world cargo moves through the containers and about nearly 50 % of all imports to the US arrive via 16 million containers. In this case, the security and tracking of each is a vital thing (Hunt, 2007).

Business and Technical Problems which could be solved

There are certain limitations with the use of this technology; companies are widely using this technology for effective management. There could be internal conflict between the cooperating partners and make them agree as per the standards which are needed for the communication, signal strength, data transmission rates. Another limitation of this technology is the cost related with the technology. There are mainly two kinds of tags which are available these are active and passive, one has a self-energy source and other don’t have a self-energy level (Finkelzeller, 1991). According to the  report published in the year 2003, RFID technology in the Manufacturing process, the cost reduction in the labor cost is about 5- 35 % due to the use of this technology. As per the report, the cost of the active and passive tags should be 25 cents whereas the cost of the tags stands for about $1 per tag. This acts like a limitation for the use of the tags in only high valued products in long ranges.   The another limitation is the frequency which is dependable upon different factors such as Transmission mode, there are two transmission frequencies which can be used for this technology which are 125-134 kHz in the lower band and another is 13.64 MHz for the High-frequency band. The operation and the function can be affected by the working environment and the improper orientation.  These must be addressed for the proper functionality of the RFID technology in business; the frequency ranges which are used for the application should be under the required range. These are the limitations related with the technology needed to be addressed carefully. This may create malfunction or this can display wrong information if these requirements are not met as per requirements (ward, 2004).

 RFID technology is widely used by many organizations for simplifying the process related with the supply chain management. This is mainly used to reduce for the reduction of the cost and efforts which are directly linked with the business operation of the company. In 2003, Wal-mart adopted this technology for the inventory management. In 2007, RFID was implemented to track pallets of merchandises which are traveling along its supply chain. This technology was also implemented in the warehouse of the company and this helped them to slash the out of stock occurrence by one-third. Later on, Wal-Mart has used this technology in the Garments and products which helped them in managing the Supply chain management. RFID tags are more helpful than the barcode as this can store more data and can be traced from a distance without a clear sight. RFID technology is being used by many different industries as well as by the public enterprises, Harley-Davidson, and Toyota has used this technology to track the parts of the motorcycles and automobile respectively. Department of Defense is using this technology from last decade to manage the inventory. The benefits associated with the RFID technology also helps the companies to track and implement different supply chain management processes which are needed by them.

Limitation of the RFID Technology

In the present market situation, RFID technology is widely being used by different companies for the business process. It's also attracting many different sectors for the adoption of the technology in the supply chain as well as in the manufacturing process. It is also expected that in 2015 about 1 trillion tags could be delivered worldwide. Bigger industries such as Wal-Mart and its suppliers would use about 1 billion tags. Adoption of this technology will save the cost by 5-35 % which makes a significant impact over other industries who are dealing with the Sales Manufacturing as well as in the Inventory management. In the year 2007, the RFID had saved about $ 7 billion for the Pharmaceutical industry.  The benefit which is being offered by this technology is making it more business friendly as compared to other technologies.  The future market prospect of this technology is bright as compared to other technologies which are being used. Currently,  the cost which occurs for implementation of the Active or passive tags costs about $1. In future with increase demand its expected that the price would lower significantly which will result in increase demand for the RFID.

Conclusion:

I conclude that technology plays a vital role in all industries whether manufacturing, retail or in supply chain management. Technology is being adopted by the companies for timely and cost effective accomplishment of the projects. In this assignment, I have gone through the technological advancement in the business and how these techs are affecting the businesses. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology is being used by many companies for business improvement. RFID is used to manage inventory of the companies also for the real timer tracking. I have also described the technical limitation as well as the security benefits of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology.  Wal-Mart and Department of Defense have adopted this technology in last decade and this technology has played an important role in making the business more accessible. The benefits and the problems which are related with the RFID are also described in the assignment. The current market scenario and the future perspective of the market for this technology are also described in the assignment.

Reference:

Finkelzeller, The RFID Handbook, 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Want et al., “Bridging Real and Virtual Worlds with Electronic Tags,” Proc. ACM SIGCHI, ACM Press, 1999

Hunt .et.al, RFID: A Guide to Radio Frequency Identification, John Wiley & Sons, 2007

Want, .R, RFID Explained: A Primer on Radio Frequency Identification Technologies, 2006, Morgan & Claypool Publishers

Yong-Dong. Et.al, The RFID Application in Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 2009, Medwell Journals, Pg- 57-61

R. Want, “Enabling Ubiquitous Sensing with RFID,” Computer, vol. 37, no. 4, 2004