REFID and ZigBee Technology to automate Supply Chain Management

1. Introduction 

With the advent of industrial revolution, the way in which businesses operate has undergone a major shift and automation has become core aspect of business operations, with an aim of enhancing efficiency of businesses. The supply chain management is one of the core areas which need automation by seeking benefit of Information Technology (IT) enablers, of which RFID and Zigbee technology are considered as most prevalent (Narayanaswami et al., 2019). In order to deal with abruptly changing demands of consumers, as witnessed during the recent pandemic, retail stores have faced huge pressure in smooth management of its supply chain (Mekruksavanich, 2020). The panic buying of consumers and rapid sales of inventory items from stores is one instance of the factors, which could cause shortage of inventory in store. The flexibility and structural adaptability are considered as core aspects of contemporary supply chain management (Neelakandan, Tyagi and Nagalkar, 2019). In order to develop needed resilience and flexibility, manual supply chain has higher associated cost, as it requires commitment of additional resources. Some instances of this cost are associated with management of buffer inventory, development of extra capacity and high level of coordination needed between personnel and sales activities (Strassner, 2005). Firms can balance the needed resilience and cost by ensuring higher level of visibility throughout the supply chain, as well as improved speed to respond to the changes. 

In order to improve efficiency of supply chain management, RFID integrated with Zigbee technology can help to obtain real time status of the products in stores. Hereby, RFID technology will serve as the way of data collection system, whereas Zigbee network will be a wireless communication network that will allow to transmit the same information to various stakeholders throughout the supply chain. It has been mentioned by Angeles (2005) that both the RFID and Zigbee will act as feedback link and thus monitoring of material and items become easy. The large retail stores like Woolworth and Coles are found to struggle with the tracking of inventory, and huge personnel involvement is needed to ensure that material tracking is carried out in efficient manner (Ahmed and Bakhsh, 2017). In order to solve this issue, RFID technology and Zigbee technology network are considered as attractive solution, whereby time consumed in manual tracking of inventory can be saved and automation can be used for enhancing efficiency of supply chain (Oghazi et al., 2018). 

1.1 RFID and ZigBee Network Technology

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a type of wireless technology which is widely used in industry 4.0 for carrying out automatic tracking, locating as well as identification of an object or an item, without requiring any specific line of contact. RFID tags are slightly different from barcode tags, as it does not require any line of sight and tags can be scanned and identified even from a distance (Alyami, Campion and Atkins, 2016; Van Hoek, R., 2019). RFID is also recognized as intelligent form of bar code, which allows the items to be tracked in the supply chain and thus makes supply chain operations more easy and efficient. 

ZigBee on the other hand is recognized as advanced wireless communication protocols, which is based on IEEE 802 standard and makes use of small and low power digital radios (Van Hoek, R., 2019). ZigBee communication network is used for transmitting data and information over a long distance, whereby data travels from intermediate devices with an aim of approaching the distant devices. These characteristics make ZigBee adhoc network, which gives it limited centralized control (Podduturi et al., 2019). The use of ZigBee is considered as less expensive, secure and simple in contrast to other WPAN applications. ZigBee uses pool of technologies to ensure scalability and self-organization, which can manage number of different data traffic patterns and thus it makes networking possible across low power devices. It has been noted by Attaran (2012) that ZigBee serves as the way of assuring fine communication between devices and thus it is one of the most effective wireless network for carrying out monitoring and analysis across different business operations. 

Both the RFID and ZigBee are considered as emerging technologies which have been substantially applied in large number of industries including; logistics, supply chain management as well as asset tracking process (Wu et al., 2016; Sharma and Sharma, 2016). The shorter time lags and error free ID entries are considered as key factors for contributing in the success of the system (Zelbst et al., 2019). Moreover, the readability of RFID from remote distance and ability to read numerous tags in specific time are benefits of the anti-collision technology which are realized by many industries and departments. 

1.2 Problem Statement

Most of the organizations are making use of bar code technology for keeping track of products in their supply chain, which although is economic and simpler than RFID, yet has many drawbacks. For instance, it requires substantial human intervention to scan each item and has the capacity to scan individual item. RFID technology on the other hand has capacity to read multiple tags and it provides an easy way to track movement of objects in automated manner. On the other hand, in terms of speed, quality, flexibility as well as accuracy, RFID has advantage over bar technology. Likewise, based on limited communication range of RFID and relatively high cost of data transmission, the integration of Zigbee technology is considered as suitable way to obtain greater benefits of the technology. It is noted by …. That regardless of numerous stated benefits of RFID and Zigbee technology, still organizations are reluctant to use the technology for automation of their supply chains. Therefore, the underlying study is aimed to explore the benefits as well as limitations of using RFID and Zigbee Technology for automation of supply chain of retail stores. The reason for choosing retail stores lies in the notion that retail sector is struggling to enhance efficiency of its supply chain due to greater movement of objects and goods. The errors and wastage of material is high, which incurs high cost on movement of material. Therefore, automation of supply chain seems a feasible option for this sector and exploration of RFID and Zigbee technology for automating supply chain of retail stores has greater significance.