The impact of big data analytics on firms’ high value business performance

Big Data Analytics (BDA) is an emerging phenomenon with the reported potential to transform how firms manage and enhance high value businesses performance. The purpose of our study is to investigate the impact of BDA on operations management in the manufacturing sector, which is an acknowledged infrequently researched context. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, this empirical study leverages a comparative case study of three manufacturing companies with varying levels of BDA usage (experimental, moderate and heavy). The information technology (IT) business value literature and a resource based view informed the development of our research propositions and the conceptual framework that illuminated the relationships between BDA capability and organizational readiness and design. Our findings indicate that BDA capability (in terms of data sourcing, access, integration, and delivery, analytical capabilities, and people’s expertise) along with organizational readiness and design factors (such as BDA strategy, top management support, financial resources, and employee engagement) facilitated better utilization of BDA in manufacturing decision making, and thus enhanced high value business performance. Our results also highlight important managerial implications related to the impact of BDA on empowerment of employees, and how BDA can be integrated into organizations to augment rather than replace management capabilities. Our research will be of benefit to academics and practitioners in further aiding our understanding of BDA utilization in transforming operations and production management. It adds to the body of limited empirically based knowledge by highlighting the real business value resulting from applying BDA in manufacturing firms and thus encouraging beneficial economic societal changes

A Review of RFID in Supply Chain Management: 2000–2015

This paper presents a systematic literature review of papers that were published in academic journals on the applications of radio frequency identification (RFID) in supply chain management between the years 2000 and 2015. As the literature on RFID is not confined to specific disciplines or repositories, this paper proposes a discipline-based framework for classifying RFID literature. Five main classification categories are used in this paper: technology, supply chain management, research methodology, application industries, and social aspects. The paper then focuses on the category of supply chain management and reviews 1187 articles that were published between 2000 and 2015 in rated journals. All the papers reviewed are further classified into eight subclasses under this category of supply chain management. The review yields useful insights into the anatomy of RFID literature in supply chain management, enhances evidence-based knowledge, and contributes to informing practice, policymaking and future research. The review reveals that even presently, despite technical and cost challenges, enormous potential exists for the application of RFID in several areas of supply chain management and the prospects are likely to grow into the future. Since RFID solutions have emerged primarily over only the past 20 years, significant research opportunities exist and would need to be addressed to continue to support the technology’s maturation, evaluation, adoption, implementation, and diffusion