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Part - III

3. Business Process Reengineering

Business process reengineering (BPR) efforts call for 'radical' restructuring of processes to eliminate waste, improve quality, increase service level and enhance customer satisfaction. Most BPR efforts are confined to one company; however, BPR across multiple members of the supply chain should become increasingly common. By thinking in terms of supply chains instead of individual operations or functions, companies can improve their competitive strategies. Advances in information and communication technologies have made it possible to have real-time connectivity among supply chain partners.

4. Automatic Identification Techniques

Automatic identification, or auto ID for short, is the broad term given to a host of technologies that are used to help machines identify objects. Auto identification is often coupled with automatic data capture. That is, companies want to identify items, capture information about them and somehow get the data into a computer without having employees type it in. The aim of most auto-ID systems is to increase efficiency, reduce data entry errors, and free up staff to perform more value-added functions, such as providing customer service. There are a host of technologies that fall under the auto-ID umbrella. These include bar codes, smart cards, voice recognition, some biometric technologies (retinal scans, for instance), optical character recognition, and radio frequency identification (RFID).

Introduction to RFID

In general terms, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a means of identifying a person or object using a radio frequency transmission, typically 125 kHz, 13.56 MHz or 800-900MHz. There are several methods of identification, but the most common is to store a serial number that identifies a person or object, and perhaps other information, on a microchip that is attached to an antenna (the chip and the antenna together are called an RFID transponder or an RFID tag). The antenna enables the chip to transmit the identification information to a reader. The reader converts the radio waves reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can then be passed on to computers that can make use of it.

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* Contributed by -
Siddharth Mohan Patnaik, B.Tech. (Electronics),
Ravulpathi Janaki, B.Tech. (Mechanical),
II Year, IIM Lucknow.