Business Impacts of RFID Applications (PDF)

The RFID technology and disciplines have been widely discussed in research circles, business and industry forums. Recently, a number of publication venues have been created to foster scientific insights and solicit new research results on RFID technology. This e-book was launched to serve as a source, where newest findings of research on RFID applications, organizational and business impacts, and implementation challenges are put together. With its growing affordability, availability and applicability, the RFID technology finds its way into literally every sector of economy, business and industry such as transportation and cargo, storage and retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and many other sectors and domains. One of the domains where RFID is showing unprecedented potential is supply chain management, where tracking, monitoring, timing, security, coordination and planning play important roles. As a whole, RFID technology is emerging as the next wave of interorganizational information systems that can transform supply chain management practices. While the potential of RFID technology is obviously high in terms of operational performance optimization, there are various theoretical and managerial issues that require scientific intervention. For example, how should an appropriate business case be constructed? What is the impact on the firm when RFID is used only by some of the trading partners? Will RFID have similar impacts inside and outside the adapting organization? In the same light, it is worth to research what considerations are to be taken into account at the extended enterprise network level and throughout the whole industry. Most importantly, the introduction of RFID will have certain behavioral, managerial and business impacts. It is interesting to analyze how RFID and real-time decision-making will change managerial and organizational capabilities, etc. In contributing to these debates, this special issue aims to publish most recent research results addressing RFID applications and RFID business impacts study using innovative approaches, including modeling and simulation.