Managing RFID projects in organizations

European Journal of Information Systems (2009) 18, 534–540. doi:10.1057/ejis.2009.43 Radio frequency identification (RFID) allows automated identification of products by embedding chips with wireless antennas on objects. RFID uses transponder technology for the contactless recognition of objects. An important element of this technology is the RFID tag comprising a small computer chip and a wireless antenna. The information on the chip is read using RFID readers that may be portable handheld devices or mounted at specific locations. Some software and infrastructure is usually used to record RFID data and interface with enterprise systems. RFID has been adopted in many application areas ranging from inventory control in supply chain management to customer relationship management in retailing. The key advantage of RFID is that it leads to increased visibility of items, pallets or people on the move and allows for real-time querying of the location of these entities. The increased data on movement of items have the potential to enhance various activities related to organizational decision making such as demand forecasting, shelf space management, target marketing, prevention of stockouts, among others. IDTechEx, a market research company, estimated that the value of the entire RFID market (including tags, readers and software services) is U.S.$5.56 billion in 2009 compared to U.S.$5.25 billion in 2008. Further, a total of 2.35 billion tags will be sold in 2009 compared to 1.97 billion in 2008 (Das & Harrop, 2009). Another report estimated that the RFID market is set to grow at a CAGR of about 28% from 2010–2013. The Asia-Pacific region (including China, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand) will experience the highest growth in RFID (RNCOS, 2009). These forecasts are significant in that, despite the financial crisis, the RFID market continues to grow. In contrast, an earlier study found that only 9% of retailers have adopted RFID technologies and among them only 29% of the retailers opened an RFID enabled pilot store by the end of 2006 (Kilcourse, 2006). There is no denying that in spite of the tremendous fanfare on RFID by the popular press, organizations remain cautious and conservative when it comes to the adoption of RFID technologies. Many organizations set up pilot programs to test RFID technology in their operations but withdraw later on due to uncertainties related to return on investment or lack of technical know-how. For example, Wal-Mart scaled down their RFID plans after experiencing significant challenges during implementation (Songini, 2007). The theme of the special issue is to uncover the challenges faced by organizations in the execution of RFID projects as well as how assessment of RFID value can be made. Specifically, papers in the special issue will encompass three key components, that is, Applications, Issues and Value, as shown in Figure 1. The first component ‘Applications’ illustrates the various applications that RFID can be deployed; the second component ‘Issues’ is concerned with the various issues that affect the adoption and use of RFID; and the final component ‘Value’ examines how the value of RFID can be assessed. In the following sections, we will discuss these three components as well as how the papers in the special issues relate to these components. European Journal of Information Systems (2009) 18, 534–540 & 2009 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/09