Knowledge Zone - Operations



Role of RFID in Supply Chain Management

by Siddharth Patnaik & R. Janaki *

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Part - IX

  • Pricing and Promotion

    Demand and Revenue Management solutions track point-of-sale, on-shelf, and inbound inventory information to support real-time, store-level pricing and promotion optimization. These solutions provide vendors running programs in stores with the ability to optimally price and promote their products according to inventory position and sell-through rates. Through RFID, manufacturers and retailers have real-time visibility to what items are selling versus those that are not. Also, product-specific attributes can be monitored in real time, including: -

    • Product spoilage

    • Product expiration

    • Product obsolescence

    By receiving real-time updates to what products are selling, price lists can be monitored and updated. Additionally, you can develop and run markdown and promotional strategies based on market information telling you exactly what is happening at the point of sale.

  • Shipping & Receiving

    The same tags used to identify work-in-process or finished goods inventory could also trigger automated shipment-tracking applications. Items, cases or pallets with RFID tags could be read as they are assembled into a complete customer order or shipment. The individual readings could be used to automatically produce a shipment manifest, which could be printed in a document, recorded automatically in the shipping system, encoded in an RFID tag, printed in a 2D bar code on the shipping label, or any combination. Having complete shipment data available in an RFID tag that can be read instantly without manual intervention is very valuable for cross-dock and high-volume distribution environments. Incoming shipments can be automatically queried for specific containers. If a sought-after item was present, it could be quickly located and selected.

  • Regulatory Compliance

    Companies that transport or process hazardous materials, food, pharmaceuticals and other regulated materials could record the time they received and transferred the material on an RFID tag that travels with the material. Updating the tag with real-time handling data creates a chain of- custody record that could be used to satisfy regulatory reporting requirements.

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