Résumé:
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was used since the Second World War to identify
“friend or foe” aircrafts. Recently, it is becoming an enabling wireless technology which is
widely employed in a number of application areas such as ID badges and access control,
equipment, personal, and patient tracking in hospitals, highway tolls collection, tracking
livestock movements and air freight, parking lot access and control, container and pallet
tracking, product tracking through manufacturing and assembly, inventory control, and in
supply chain management (SCM). RFID tags were used for tracking pallets and cases by both
Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense (DoD) of USA in 2003. By 2006, Wal-Mart has
extended the requirements to use RFID to all its suppliers. The use of RFID in supply chain
networks has allowed Wal-Mart to create value through greater visibility in its networks,
higher product velocity, reduced human error and labor cost, and more efficient inventory
management. This eventually led to the achievement of Quick Response (QR) and improved
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the supply chain. However, some RFID
system challenges (e.g. system design, tags and readers cost), and uncertain Return-OnInvestment (ROI) still need to be overcome to fully achieve these objectives. This paper
introduces RFID technology and its key components and concepts, and presents our RFID
middleware solution called FlexRFID which was developed with an aim of achieving the
maximum benefits of RFID technology independently of the interested backend applications.
We illustrate how RFID technology can be used to solve the main problems in SCM, the
advantages and key issues when implementing RFID in SCM networks, and the relationship
between RFID and the main SCM processes. Finally we give a suggestion of how FlexRFID
middleware can be integrated with an SCM application for inventory control.
