RFID in the Supply Chain - Guide to Sele - Size

xxii � RFID in the Supply Chain: A Guide to Selection and Implementation
Defense, Target, Albertsons, and Best Buy in the United States, and the
METRO Group in Germany. These customers mandated the suppliers provide
their own RFID equipment and infrastructure and deliver RFID-tagged
cases and pallets of items by January 1, 2005. Other large retailers provided
their top suppliers with RFID equipment and technology to help them to
get started. Some suppliers who did not receive the mandates or the RFID
equipment from their customers decided to invest voluntarily in RFID technology
rather than waiting for the “second” mandates and for opportunities
to reap profits from RFID technology later on.
There are suppliers who have received the mandate from a customer,
and the RFID equipment from another customer and have introduced or
already introduced emerging RFID technologies into their companies without
waiting for either a mandate or RFID equipment from a third customer.
There are some suppliers who have received mandates from customers
each requiring different RFID infrastructure implementation, depending on
the type of item and package to be tagged.
There are suppliers who have implemented or planned to implement
RFID technology in a portion of the supply chain with the intention of
implementing it to the remaining part of the supply chain. This will happen
when RFID technology gets more sophisticated, or the customers issue new
mandates, or provide suppliers with more advanced RFID equipment.
The supplier–customer relationship in selecting and implementing the
RFID technology can get very complex in the supply chain. Issues of what
implementation approaches are used, how business process should be
reengineered, and how organizational maturity affects reengineering
projects should be addressed in one or more business process models I
developed. They are (1) Multi-Layer RFID Business Process Models (basic,
adaptive, and predictive), and (2) RFID business process life cycles including
the adaptive linear feedback, and adaptive dynamic life-cycle models.
For background materials on business processes models, the reader
should have a basic understanding of the supply chain overview as discussed
in Chapter 1. Then the reader should move on to the next chapter
on RFID selection guideline and implementation examples, such as speed
of tag reads versus quality of computer inputs, and optimal tag location.
An understanding of the RFID application in Supply Chain Management
as discussed in Chapter 3 should be acquired before the reader proceeds
to the implementation of a business process model. The reader should be
aware that the business and IT executives have different concerns on implementing
the RFID applications. The business executives are concerned with
customers and vendors and about the business processes that need to be
adapted to SCM logistics in response to changing customers’ demand for
supplies and information about them. The IT executives, on the other hand,