Studying RFID adoption by SMES in the Taiwanese IT industry

With the advent of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), organisations have the opportunity to rethink how their organisation will operate and integrate in the supply chain. Especially for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), that they have limited resources adopting such an innovative technology (i.e. RFID) can be daunting. Literature indicates that SMEs that deal with implementation have so far only a few guidelines regarding specific opportunities and risks. This research is therefore trying to fill the gap by employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) techniques and utilising a questionnaire survey with the aim of exploring the factors that affect SMEs’ RFID adoption in the Taiwan Information Technology (IT) manufacturing industry. In doing so, the adoption factors which are classified into 3 different adopters categories named ready adopter (cost and management), initiator adopter (competitiveness and process efficiency) and unprepared adopter (IT management difficulties, IT implementation difficulties and cost of implementation) using EFA technique. A SMEs RFID adoption model is then proposed. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will not only enhance the research in RFID adoption in SMEs, but can also act as a reference for practitioners in the industry and researchers in the academic field

Building better healthcare – technologies to facilitate evidence-based design processes

Building better healthcare – technologies to facilitate evidence-based design processe

Radio Frequency Identification Technology: Applications, Technical Challenges and Strategies

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to discuss the technology behind RFID systems, identify the applications of RFID in various industries, and discuss the technical challenges of RFID implementation and the corresponding strategies to overcome those challenges. Design/methodology/approach - Comprehensive literature review and integration of the findings from literature. Findings - Technical challenges of RFID implementation include tag cost, standards, tag and reader selection, data management, systems integration and security. The corresponding solution is suggested for each challenge. Research limitations/implications - A survey type research is needed to validate the results. Practical implications - This research offers useful technical guidance for companies which plan to implement RFID and we expect it to provide the motivation for much future research in this area. Originality/value - As the infancy of RFID applications, few researches have existed to address the technical issues of RFID implementation. Our research filled this gap

An Integrated Conceptual Framework for RFID Enabled Healthcare

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is a wireless communication technology that facilitates automatic identification and data capture without human intervention. Since 2000s, RFID applications in the health care industry are increasing.  RFID has brought many improvements in areas like patient care, patient safety, equipment tracking, resource utilization, processing time reduction and so on. On the other hand, often deployment of RFID is questioned on the issues like high capital investment, technological complexity, and privacy concerns. Exploration of existing literature indicates the presence of works on the topics like asset management, patient management, staff management, institutional advantages, and organizational issues. However, most of the works are focused on a particular issue. Still now, scholarly attempts to integrate all the facades of RFID-enabled healthcare are limited. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework that represents the scope for implementation of this technology and the various dimensions of RFID-enabled healthcare and demonstrate them in detail. Also, we have discussed the critical issues that can prove to be potential barriers to its successful implementation and current approaches to resolving these. We also discuss some of the regulatory initiatives encouraging its adoption in the healthcare industry. Also, we have highlighted the future research opportunities in this domain

RFID Adoption: An Exploratory Study of Issues and Concerns

Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems have received increased attention from academicians and practitioners in the past few years. By implementing RFID, companies could achieve “process freedoms” and real-time visibility. Studies have discussed about opportunities, benefits, and challenges in deploying RFID. The issues discussed and insights offered in these studies were mostly of theoretical and conceptual significance due to the emergent nature of the phenomenon and difficulty in collecting data. The purpose of this paper is to get practical insights into organizations’ strategic issues in adapting to this new technological change. It examines the firm’s decision to adopt RFID from strategic perspective and aims to understand the transition process in doing so. The findings and conclusions reported are based on the data collected from organizations that have started the deployment process or have already deployed RFID

Impact of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) Technologies on the Hospital Supply Chain: A Literature Review

Supply costs account for more than one-third of the average operating budget and constitute the second largest expenditure in hospitals. As hospitals have sought to reduce these costs, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has emerged as a solution. This study reviews existing literature to gauge the recent and potential impact and direction of the implementation of RFID in the hospital supply chain to determine current benefits and barriers of adoption. Findings show that the application of RFID to medical equipment and supplies tracking has resulted in efficiency increases in hospitals with lower costs and increased service quality. RFID technology can reduce costs, improve patient safety, and improve supply chain management effectiveness by increasing the ability to track and locate equipment, as well as monitoring theft prevention, distribution management, and patient billing. Despite ongoing RFID implementation in the hospital supply chain, barriers to widespread and rapid adoption include significant total expenditures, unclear return on investment, and competition with other strategic imperatives

Accessing Antecedents and Outcomes of RFID Implementation in Health Care

This research first conceptualizes, develops, and validates four constructs for studying RFID in health care, including Drivers (Internal and External), Implementation Level (Clinical Focus and Administrative Focus), Barriers (Cost Issues, Lack of Understanding, Technical Issues, and Privacy and Security Concerns), and Benefits (Patient Care, Productivity, Security and Safety, Asset Management, and Communication). Data for the study were collected from 88 health care organizations and the measurement scales were validated using structural equation modeling. Second, a framework is developed to discuss the causal relationships among the above mentioned constructs. It is found that Internal Drivers are positively related to Implementation Level, which in turn is positively related to Benefits and Performance. In addition, Barriers are found to be positively related to Implementation Level, which is in contrast to the originally proposed negative relationship. The research also compares perception differences regarding RFID implementation among the non-implementers, future implementers, and current implementers of RFID. It is found that both future implementers and current implementers consider RFID barriers to be lower and benefits to be higher compared to the non-implementers. This paper ends with our research implications, limitations and future research

Implementing RFID Automation into a Small Scale Aircraft Maintenance System

The purpose of this study was to explore and identify where technology automation could be used to reduce time and wasted labor in aircraft inventory and maintenance processes. The research used passive RFID AutoID technology due to its capabilities in data logging and relatively hands-off, passive use. The Purdue University’s aircraft maintenance system operates under old time card systems with paper inspection, check outs of tools, and non-routine inspections, contributing to long search times when looking for maintenance problems or lost inventory that may have happened up to and over a year ago. Furthermore, there are general inefficiencies due to locating forms and filling out paperwork. This study evaluated the effectiveness of RFID technology in an updated process map of tool / part usage, while providing a proof-of-concept RFID-enabled system to track aircraft inventory parts and tools. The study collected information about tool usage and inventory accountability. The use of a database to facilitate this data tracking would have allowed easy access and analysis for maintenance managers to better identify tool use with individual technicians. The solution was to RFID tag a selected test set of specialized aircraft maintenance tools found in the tool room at Hangar 6 in Purdue University’s airport that require check out (as well as aircraft inventory parts), utilize the RFID tunnel and Alien RFID system at Purdue University’s Supply Chain Lab, attach RFID tags to mock name badges, and allow for tracking simply by walking through the door or near the tunnel and checking if the tool was recorded by the RFID reader for that particular person. This resulted in a study of the “before case” process map to the “after case” process map, and whether any steps were removed or added