This paper presents the pros and cons of using radio-frequency identification (RFID) in supply chain management (SCM). While RFID has a greater number of benefits than its predecessor, the bar code, it currently comes at a price that many businesses still consider prohibitive. On the one hand, RFID is advantageous because it does not require line-of-sight scanning, it acts to reduce labor levels, enhances visibility, and improves inventory management. On the other hand, RFID is presently a costly solution, lacking standardization, it has a small number of suppliers developing end-to-end solutions, suffers from some adverse deployment issues, and is clouded by privacy concerns. Irrespective of these factors, the ultimate aim of RFID in SCM is to see the establishment of item-level tracking which should act to revolutionize SCM practices, introducing another level of efficiencies never before seen.
Disciplines
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
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The Global Positioning System (GPS) is increasingly being adopted by private and public enterprise to track and monitor humans for locationbased services (LBS)
This paper introduces the notion of location-based intelligence by tracking the spatial properties and behavior of a single civilian participant over a two-week study period using a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, and displaying them on a geographic information system (GIS). The paper clearly shows the power of combining speed (S), distance (D), time (T) and elevation (E) data with the exact longitude and latitude position of the user. The issues drawn from the observation and the civilian's personal diary are useful in understanding the social implications of tracking and monitoring objects and subjects using GPS. The findings show that while GPS has been used in some very innovative ways, there are a plethora of ethical dilemmas associated with its use on civilians, even if they are requesting a given service and paying for its utilization. From the information recorded during the field observation, a number of inherent technical limitations in GPS were identified which add to the complexity of such related areas as law and commerce. In conclusion, while the benefits of GPS for specific applications is apparent, safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that information gathered by the GPS is not misused or abused. One can envisage that if the wrong hands obtain location information records for individual subscribers that the potential exposure and risk might be even greater than that of stolen credit cards.
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