Development of an RFID‐based Traceability System: Experiences and Lessons Learned from an Aircraft Engineering Company

Abstract

T his paper presents a case study of the research and development of an RFID-based traceability system in an aircraft engineering company in Hong Kong. We report the system design and implementation, and discuss our experiences and lessons learned. The aim of the RFID system is to effectively support the tracking and tracing of aeroplane repairable items in the company. The study reveals eight critical success factors for the successful implementation of RFID systems, namely, create strong internal and external motivation for improvement, stir up desire to keep abreast of the latest technology for global competitiveness, strive for cross organizational implementation, avoid major process changes/limit process changes, start with a small RFID project scope, facilitate equipment vendor's investment, use cost-effectiveness reusable tags, and transfer RFID skills and knowledge from university to industry. We also summarize 13 lessons learned, including three lessons concerning RFID implementation at strategic level, six lessons at management level, and four lessons at operational level resulting from carrying out this project. Given the contextual details of the study, the lessons learned can help other firms to better anticipate the hurdles they will experience, and make them aware of the possible ways to cope with such difficulties before embarking on the journey of RFID implementation.

An exploratory study of RFID implementation in the supply chain

“…Other case studies include Volvo's supply chain flow (Holmqvist and Stefansson, 2006), an RFID-based traceability system at a Hong Kong aircraft engineering company (Ngai et al, 2007), an RFID system to improve supply chain visibility for a medium sized third party logistics company (Choy et al, 2007), the use of a RFID-based logistics system by Korean third-party logistics provider CJ-Global Logistics Service (Kim et al, 2008), and a container tracking study of a large packaging company and its logistics service providers (Pålsson, 2008).…”

Critical Elements and Lessons Learnt from the Implementation of an RFID-enabled Healthcare Management System in a Medical Organization

“…It is considered as a new form of barcode that supports automatic data capturing without a line of sight, and has proved its benefits in various applications such as animal behavior analysis [1], supply chain management optimization [2,3], business automation [4], intelligent asset management [5,6], and anti-counterfeiting [7]. According to the ten-year academic review conducted by Ngai et al [8], RFID is a hot topic in the field of retailing, library services, animal detection, food, logistics and supply chain management.…”

A* Algorithm

“…Radio frequency identification (RFID) has enormous potential for automated traceability in manufacturing systems. According to Ngai et al (2007), its advantages include improved lead time; ability to offer customers timely information about an item's status and job completion time, improved maintenance operations; reduction in human errors, improved inventory management, automatic capture of data and resulting lower costs, and improved customer relationships.…”