An Empirical Analysis of the RFID Effect on Suppliers\u27 Financial Performance

The objective of this study is to rigorously examine the effects of RFID on suppliers’ profitability while adjusting for endogeneity bias arising from the decision process for RFID adoption. To this end, we use a Heckman two-stage estimation method, which allows us to control for endogeneity between a firm’s organizational characteristics and its decision for RFID adoption. We find that suppliers faced with both a low level of inventory efficiency and with highly uncertain demand are more likely to adopt RFID. Further, suppliers that have adopted RFID achieve greater financial gains than their counterparts that have not. More importantly, we show that these financial gains result from improved inventory and sales efficiencies after RFID is deployed. In sum, our study sheds new light on what drives supplying firms to adopt RFID and on its role in shaping relatively higher financial performance in a post-adoption period

An Empirical Analysis to Control Product Counterfeiting in the Automotive Industry\u27s Supply Chains in Pakistan

The counterfeits pose significant health and safety threat to consumers. The quality image of firms is vulnerable to the damage caused by the expanding flow of counterfeit products in today’s global supply chains. The counterfeiting markets are swelling due to globalization and customers’ willingness to buy counterfeits, fueling illicit activities to explode further. Buyers look for the original parts are deceived by the false (deceptive) signals’ communication. The counterfeiting market has become a multi-billion industry but lacks detailed insights into the supply side of counterfeiting (deceptive side). The study aims to investigate and assess the relationship between the anti-counterfeiting strategies and improvement in the firm’s supply performance within the internal and external supply chain quality management context in the auto-parts industry’s supply chains in Pakistan

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

A Tough Pill to Swallow? The Lessons Learned from Mandatory RFID Adoption

On some occasions, information technology (IT) is mandated rather than voluntary. However, the impact of mandatory IT adoption receives little attention in the operations management literature, and the literature shows divergent predictions about how mandatory IT affects financial performance. Using the case of mandatory radio-frequency identification (RFID) adoption in manufacturing industries, this study applies long-horizon event study to examine 95 U.S. listed firms that have adopted mandatory RFID. The resultsshow that firms achieve significantly strong financial performance from mandatory adoption. Mandatory RFID is particularly beneficial for firms with good financial health, late adopters and high-clockspeed firms.The current study provides a deeper understanding of supplier benefits from mandatory systems supported by dominant customers. Based on the lessons learned from past mandatory RFID adoption, the present study can serve as guidance for future projects and contribute to the literature on operations management and information system

RFID adoption in healthcare organizations in UAE

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is currently regarded as one of the most promising technologies, and considered as one of the sixteen key technologies in the coming decade, specifically in terms of its use, pervasiveness, market demand and commercial availability. RFID is perceived as critical technology for many purposes and applications, such as improving the efficiency and effectiveness in business operations and improving customer service. This research therefore has a hedonic motivation in developing an incorporated view of theoretical framework to identify factors that affect RFID adoption in healthcare and providing an empirical analysis of the effect of both organizational and individual factors on the diffusion of RFID based on the health care industry. Unlike other studies, the current study places more attention on individual factors in addition to the organizational factors and technological factors in an attempt to better understand the phenomenon of RFID adoption in health care, which is described as a complex and a very demanding work environment. This study serves to fill a gap in the existing literature through explaining of how user factors can contribute to the adoption of RFID in healthcare and how such factors might lead to better understanding of the benefits, use and impacts of RFID in health care sector

Effects Of RFID Technology On Efficiency And Profitability In Retail Supply Chains

Ten years have passed since Wal-Mart’s public announcement about its RFID technology adoption plan in 2003. Some large competitors of Wal-Mart in the U.S. retail industry jumped on the trend of RFID technology adoption. However, there has been a slowdown of RFID technology adoption since 2008. Many U.S. retailers do not consider adopting RFID technology because of the uncertainty of return on investment and the lack of business cases demonstrating its profitability or efficiency. This study investigates whether RFID companies have better financial performance ratios in the U.S. retail supply chains. RFID retailers have significantly lower days-in-inventory and lower per-employee costs. Compared with pre-RFID, the RFID retailers do not improve profit ratios after they adopted it, but their days-in-inventory ratio and sales efficiency improve significantly. Panel data regression analyses show that inventory management efficiency does impact gross margins, but the impact of cost efficiency is negligible. RFID retailers have a positive relationship with gross margin increases. In summary, it could be stated that introducing RFID improves inventory management efficiency but we do not know yet if RFID technology adoption also contributes to profitability in U.S. retail industry

Effect of Supply Chain Cultural Competence on Thai SMEs Performance with Mediating Role of Supply Chain Technology

Performance is a key indicator for the survival of any business. Organizational culture must have strong liaison with the goals of organizations because it has direct association with organizational performance. Therefore, the core objective of this study was to investigate the influence of supply chain cultural capabilities on the performance of Thai SMEs with the mediation role of supply chain technology adoption. To achieve the objective of this study, the data was collected from the managers of SMEs by using survey questioner approach. Smart-PLS was used to test the hypotheses and analysis of data. Findings of contemporary study highlighted that supply chain cultural capabilities have significant positive influence on the performance of SMEs in Thailand. Furthermore, results indicated that supply chain technology adoption could increase the performance of organizations. Results of this research illuminated that Adaptability and consistency in organizational cultural support in the adoption of supply chain technology and supply chain technology boost up the performance of organization. This research offer new empirical indication that supply chain cultural capabilities are significant for the performance of SMEs in developing countries like Thailand. Though, this research used only cultural capabilities, the other important capabilities of supply chain such as supply chain technological capabilities, would be used in future research

Reducing edible food waste in the UK food manufacturing supply chain through collaboration

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy.The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between food manufacturing supply chain (FMSC) collaboration, collaborative effectiveness and edible food waste (EF) waste reduction; and also identify the key dimensions of collaboration and collaborative effectiveness in the context of the FMSC. A conceptual framework was built based on thorough relevant literature review and theory. Then all items of the conceptual framework were revised by academics and practitioners. The model was empirically tested with survey data using 122 responses from food manufacturing firms, using PLS-SEM. The findings indicated that the structural paths support hypotheses that FMSC collaboration has a positive effect related to collaborative effectiveness, and collaborative effectiveness has a strong contribution in EF waste (over-production of EF waste, processing of EF waste and storage of EF waste) reduction. However, the direct impact of FMSC collaboration on EF waste (over-production of EF waste, processing of EF waste and storage of EF waste) reduction is insignificant. A mediation analysis showed that the relationship between FMSC collaboration and EF waste is fully mediated by collaborative effectiveness. This research brought relational view theory for the concept of FMSC collaboration and collaborative effectiveness into the FMSC context, which has not previously been done, and developed and validated those constructs and relationships. The UK FMSC members would benefit from applying all dimensions of FMSC collaboration in this study to their supply chain operation to achieve greater collaborative effectiveness, and that will lead to reducing EF waste

Roles of Information Technology in Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Information Technology (SCIT) is a key enabler of effective supply chain management (SCM) activities. In 2013, $300 billion was spent on SCIT by firms globally, an increase by 1.8% and 3.8% compared to 2012 and 2011, respectively. With such significant investments, firms face risks of eroded financial performance if SCIT does not perform as expected. In fact, there is a mix of evidence with some firms benefiting from SCIT while others failing to benefit from investing in SCIT. Despite substantial research relating to utilizing information technology in a SCM context, the impact of SCIT on firm performance remains unclear. In particular, the extant literature has reported contradictive results regarding relationships between SCIT and firm performance. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to conduct a systematic investigation of roles of information technology in SCM and shed light on this extremely important research area. In chapter 2, we investigate the direct impact of SCIT on firm performance by conducting a meta-analysis study. Specifically, we look at four types of SCIT characteristics (e.g. application integration, data compatibility, analytic ability, and evaluation and alertness ability) within three loci of utilization: upstream, downstream, and both upstream-downstream. We find that SCIT is not universally associated with improved firm performance. In particular, SCIT has multiple characteristics, and each characteristic is linked to different performance indicators. In chapter 3, we investigate how SCIT can conditionally change the relationship between supply base complexity (SBC) or customer base complexity (CBC) and performance. Extant literature suggests that a complex supply or customer base can lead to suboptimal organizational performance. Using secondary data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers, we are able to examine the impact of SBC and CBC on performance at the industry level of analysis. Further, we find that SCIT helps eliminate the negative impact of SBC and CBC on performance. By systematically investigating the direct and indirect impacts of SCIT on performance, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of the roles of information technology in supply chain management