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RFID is a technology that has existed for many years. Recently RFID received much fanfare about its application into retail supply chains. Consumers were first introduced to RFID at hotels and in employee ID cards. Soon, as RFID can be read by anyone with a reader, privacy concerns pushed customers away from RFID. Next, Wal-Mart said it would mandate its suppliers begin tagging shipments with RFID, later Wal-Mart would reverse course. Perhaps RFID should be used at the store level rather than the distribution level. This paper looks to explore new applications for RFID in the retail supply chain.
INTRODUCTION to RFID
In today's information age new technologies are susceptible to hype and implementation solely because they are new. Further, pressures can be placed on companies to implement technology for the sake of being progressive or staying current. From an operations management perspective costs of additional technology must be weighed against the benefits. Whether these benefits are hard dollar savings or sofi dollar improvements RFID is a technology that has received significant media attention but has resulted in relatively small implementation.
RFID stands for radio-frequency identification. There are two types of RFID tags, active and passive. Active tags have an on-board battery that allows these tags to transmit their signal. Passive tags rely on the radio energy transmitted wirelessly from a tag reader. This difference allows passive tags to be both smaller and cheaper than active tags (Violino, 2005). Passive tags have short read ranges. Both types consist of an integrated circuit, a modulating signal device, and an antenna (Violino, 2005). RFID operates in a frequency range expressed in mega-hertz (MHz). Lower frequencies function better in metal environments but have shorter read ranges, while higher frequencies travel farther but are more susceptible to metallic backscatter. Metallic backscatter is the interference created by metal near the tag antenna. For example, 13.56 MHz tags have a maximum read range, between tag and reader, of about 3 feet. Tags in the 915 MHz range have a maximum read range of about 60 feet (Brewin, 2004).
Created more than 70 years ago, RFID technology is just coming into mainstream use. "According to Bill Allen, marketing manager for Texas Instruments RFid Systems, the technology first was used in the...