The Research Of Effects Of RFID On Supply Chain Management And Adoption Decision

As an advanced automatic identification technology which tracks objects with tags through radio frequency, RFID has drawn more and more attention of supply chain organizations and academic researchers, and may be seen as a revolutionary technology that may raise supply chain management to the next level in terms of performance. However, since RFID has emerged very recently, enterprises in supply chain haven't understood clearly enough the influence on supply chain management brought by RFID. There also lacks of valuable analyzing methodologies and basis for decision-making confronting the problem of adoption of RFID technology. Therefore, it is of great importance both theoretically and practically to study the effects of RFID technology on supply chain management and adoption decision-making from various perpectives.The main contents could be summarized as follows:(1) It studies the effects of RFID technology on supply chain management and analyzes the application of RFID technolgy in supply chain, such as raw material supply, manufacturing, logistics management and sales.(2) It sudies how to determine RFID tag's cost and adoption decision. Newsvendor model is used to formulate a two-stage supply chain of one supplier and one retailer, which is affected by the problem of commodity loss. It studies variations of profits of supplier, retailer and whole supply chain caused by RFID technology adoption under both centralized and decentralized decision-making. The conditions are analyzed on which RFID technology should be adopted in both centralized and decentralized decision-making supply chains. Based on that, it derives the constraints on RFID tag's cost and cost formulations to achieve maximum profits increase. It concludes that maximum tag cost correlates with both the proportion of commodity loss in order quantity and costs of commodity. Finally, by use of numerical experiments the model is proved to be correct and effective.(3) It studies how to cut down lead time by incorporating RFID technology in supply chain and RFID adoption decision. The relationship between reduction of lead time and accuracy of demand forcast is found to be non-linear. Based on that, a two-stage supply chain of one manufacturer and one retailer where the manufacturer undertakes RFID cost is formulated. Then the variations of manufacturer's and retailor's profits are analyzed depending on whether RFID is adopted to cut down lead time. The condition on which to adopt RFID technology to reduce lead time is given. Furthermore when RFID technology is adopted, the constraint on tag's cost to increase the profits of manufacturer, retailer and the whole supply chain is analyzed. By incorporating linear coefficient of profit transfer, the profits of manufacturer and retailer are coordinated. By adopting RFID technology, Pareto improvement on two supply chain partners'profits is achieved. Finally the model is proved to be correct and effective using numerical experiments.(4) It studies the effects of RFID technology adoption on accuracy of inventory information. The situation and causes of inventory information distortion in retailing industry are analyzed systematically. The supply chain model of one manufacturer, one distribution center and one retailer with RFID technology adoption is formulated. Simulations are carried out to analyze the effects of RFID technology on accuracy of retailer's inventory data when the retailer applies two replenishment policies of (Q, R) and (R, S). The results of simulation demenstrates that adoption of RFID technolgy could improve data accuracy, avoid out-of-stock situation, increase retailer's sales and enhance customers'satisfaction.