Using System Dynamics to assess the impact of RFID technology on retail operations

The application of item-level radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in retail supply chains creates cost savings and promises large potential benefits from revenue growth. However, the economic assessment of the impact on improved store operations, labor utilization, and increased sales is still not fully explored. We propose to use System Dynamics as a structural modeling and simulation approach to integrate conventional return on investment evaluations. Building on previous research about RFID technology in retail supply chains, we developed a model based on the case exploration of a leading Italian apparel retailer. Simulations show that RFID implementations are profitable whenever they contribute to increase sales, especially when a fashion retailer is focused on clerk-assisted sales strategies. Sales growth results from the dynamic and integrated impacts of RFID technology on better inventory control, faster inventory turnover, and longer time available for store personnel to assist consumers as an effect of more efficient backroom operations.     

智能制造背景下企业RFID技术采纳行为机理研究

智能制造是推进制造强国的重要战略选择，企业RFID技术采纳是实现智能感知的基础。分析了企业RFID技术采纳的背景和动因，从复杂性、多重性、动态性等3个方面提炼出了企业RFID技术采纳行为的典型特征，从采纳类型、关键属性、次要属性、环境属性、采纳价值评估属性等方面对企业RFID技术采纳进行了结构化描述，在此基础上构建了企业RFID技术采纳内化概念模型，可为企业RFID技术采纳提供理论基础和宏观决策支持。     

RFID技术在炉号识别与对位连锁保护系统中的应用

用射频识别 ( RFID)技术 ,利用无线射频方式实现非接触双向通讯 ,达到识别目标和数据交换目的。利用电子标签的信息标示完成多目标识别 ,并通过炉号对准、通讯及三车连锁保护系统等方面的技术研究 ,建立了良好的焦炉信息管理平台 ,提高生产效益和管理水平 ,最终实现焦炉作业综合自动化。     

How business methods accompany technological innovations – a case study using semantic patent analysis and a novel informetric measure

Usually, the development of a technology interacts with the development of business methods, which are needed to enter the application fields. For some years now, it is possible to analyse their interaction as, next to technological innovations, business method innovations can be patented. To investigate this interplay, we select the case of radio frequency identification devices (RFID) – a technology that first emerged many years ago, but is still undergoing further development. We analyse approximately 37,000 patents related to RFID technology from the period between 1990 and 2014, differentiating between technological and business method patents, by means of bibliographic and semantic analyses, using one well established and one novel informetric measure. Contrary to our expectations, the results point to technological innovations that are not ensued but constantly accompanied by business methods. Furthermore, we identify two types of players, that is technology and application specialists. There is a clear distinction between these two types, though all companies of both types apply for technological as well as business method patents. As our semantic analysis reveals, RFID were successively introduced in their application fields between 1998 and 2008, starting with industrial applications, and then moving on to service applications. In future, technology managers should develop strategies based on the interaction between technological and business method patents, keeping in mind the early start and sequential development of different application fields.     

Manufacturing with item-level RFID information: From macro to micro quality control

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags have gained wide-spread popularity in a wide variety of application domains. However, their use in the manufacturing environment still remains at a low level. Despite maturity of related technologies, the lack of managerial understanding of potential benefits has been a major impediment to RFID tag's inroad in the manufacturing domain. In addition to their item-level identification capability, RFID tags enable local storage and retrieval of relevant features associated with each item. We consider the dynamic associated with the availability of item-level information in a mass manufacturing context, propose and develop a knowledge-based adaptive learning system for this scenario, and present related managerial insights. We use modeling as well as manufacturing process simulation to illustrate the proposed framework. Results from this study indicate that the benefits for manufacturing with item-level information increases, although bounded, with increasing variance present in the manufacturing process.     

The impact of management commitment alignment on salespersons' adoption of sales force automation technologies: An empirical investigation

Marketing and information systems scholars have explored several factors that affect sales force automation (SFA) technology adoption. In this study, we introduce a new antecedent to the SFA adoption model, management commitment alignment (MCA). We show that alignment between top management and immediate supervisors' commitment to the SFA technology is an important factor in influencing SFA adoption. Results show that while commitment from both leadership levels (perfect alignment) is the most conducive to SFA adoption, misaligned commitment conditions have differential effects on adoption. Specifically, even when supervisors are committed to sales technology, lack of top management commitment can hurt SFA adoption. Managerial implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Technology adoption and value chains in developing countries: Evidence from dairy in India

Adoption of modern technologies in agriculture is crucial for improving productivity and welfare of poor farmers in developing countries. Not much is known about how value chains do (not) affect technology transfer and/or adoption in food chains in developing countries. We analyze farm-level technology adoption in the dairy chain in India, using unique survey data. The dairy chain in India is an important case because the Indian government has promoted development of the dairy sector for its potential for ‘pro-poor’ growth, and because value chain initiatives had strong effects on dairy farm technology in other countries with imperfect markets and growth in demand. We find that despite rapid growth in milk consumption and production, technology adoption in the form of better hygienic practices, better feed and improved livestock was mixed, and low for certain regions and technologies. So far, the role of value chains in the adoption of new technologies seems to be minor.     

Women’s empowerment boosts the gains in dietary diversity from agricultural technology adoption in rural Kenya

Using new survey data from rural Kenya, this paper assesses the moderating effect of women’s empowerment on the relationship between agricultural technology adoption and women’s dietary diversity. We use a multiple treatment endogenous switching regression framework to control for potential endogeneity of women’s empowerment and technology adoption. We find that women’s empowerment has a positive and significant effect on the women’s dietary diversity score regardless of technology adoption status. We further show that women’s empowerment enhances the positive effects of technology adoption on women’s dietary diversity. Although technology adoption has a positive impact on women’s dietary diversity regardless of empowerment status, its effect is stronger for households with empowered vs. disempowered women. Study results suggest that individual and household welfare could be enhanced to a greater degree through interventions that promote women’s empowerment and technology adoption simultaneously rather than separately.     

A new lot-sizing heuristic for manufacturing systems with product recovery

We consider a deterministic model of the manufacturing system with product recovery. Two types of policies for the problem had been proposed in literature, namely the (1,R) policy, in which one manufacturing setup is followed by R remanufacturing setups and the (P,1) policy, which has P manufacturing setups, following every remanufacturing setup. Teunter (2004) developed heuristics to evaluate the cost for both policies and recommended choosing the better one among them. In this paper, we develop a new class of general (P,R) policies, where the long-run ratio of the number of manufacturing setups to the number of remanufacturing setups is P/R. Rather than have P manufacturing setups followed by R remanufacturing setups, we interleave (or intersperse) the setups of the manufacturing lots and the remanufacturing lots in such a way that the buildup of the recoverable inventory is minimized. We develop interleaving based (P,R) policy heuristics for the problem. Numerical results presented in the paper show that the proposed heuristic outperforms or performs as well as the best of the Teunter (2004) policies for all the problems tested.     

The Determinants of Technology Adoption in Italian Manufacturing Industries

The adoption of new technologies in Italian manufacturing industries is analysed using data for 13,334 firms selected from the 1990–92 Community Innovation Survey. The determinants of technology adoption are analysed in an econometric framework (logit model) which is a general test of different theoretical explanations of technological diffusion. We particularly refer to the rank, epidemic and information effects which significantly affect the use of new technology in Italian manufacturing industries. We use a set of explanatory variables which enables us to set up a well specified empirical model and to use odds ratios to determine the effect of their changes on the adoption probability, thus giving a more precise picture of the determinants of technology adoption.     

Value chain innovations for technology transfer in developing and emerging economies: Conceptual issues,typology, and policy implications

The adoption of modern technologies in agriculture is crucial for improving productivity of poor farmers and poverty reduction. However, the adoption of modern technology has been disappointing. The role of value chains in technology adoption has been largely ignored so far, despite the dramatic transformation and spread of modern agri-food value chains. We argue that value chain organization and innovations can have an important impact on modern technology adoption, not just by downstream companies, but also by farmers. We discuss conceptual issues and provide an empirical typology of institutional innovations through which value chains can contribute to technology transfer to agriculture in developing and emerging countries.     

Influencing factors in the application of RFID technology in the supply chain

This article analyzes the obstacles in the application of the Internet of Things in the supply chain by means of evolutionary game theory. Through modeling, the game payoff matrix of core enterprises and suppliers as well as their replicator dynamic equations are obtained. Subsequently, an analysis of two populations that adopt the key technology of the Internet of Things, radio frequency identification (RFID), is conducted through replicator dynamics. The two populations achieve an evolutionarily stable strategy through continuous imitation and adjustment to the strategy. Furthermore, through the analysis of relevant parameters, the influence on the RFID application strategy selected by core enterprises and suppliers of factors such as implementation risk, tag cost, system cost, maintenance cost, compelling force of core enterprises, and expected return, among others, is verified.     

Realized and potential global production effects from genetic engineering

Realized production impacts of genetic engineering (GE) are bounded by (i) restrictions on cultivation in many countries and (ii) economic constraints to adoption in regions where the technology is approved. In this paper, we use econometric modeling to gauge the long-run production impacts to date attributable to currently commercialized GE crops and traits. We then assess the achievable production impacts from relaxing regulatory constraints and increasing farm-level adoption. We estimate that global production of commercialized GE crops has generated approximately $57 billion in farm-gate revenues in 2016. The technology has increased the global supply of soybeans and maize by 13% and 11%, respectively, in addition to smaller impacts for several other important staple crops. However, the current value of genetic engineering is less than half that which could be achieved by science-based regulation of the technology. Holding constant current farm-level GE adoption rates, the increased production achievable through widespread approval could generate an additional $65 billion, the majority of which would accrue to the developing world.     

Short life-cycle deteriorating product remanufacturing in a green supply chain inventory control system

Due to global warming, environmental consciousness and shortening product life-cycles, more attentions have been paid to ecological protection and resource utilization. Green products and production process designs significantly influence the environment and resource re-usage. The relevant EU regulations, such as WEEE and EuP, have reduced negative effects by controlling the disposals and the resource re-usage. In this study, green product designs and remanufacturing efforts are investigated when we develop an integrated production inventory model with short life-cycles. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the theory. We have shown that new technology evolution, remanufacturing ratios and system’s holding costs are critical factors affecting decision making in a green supply chain inventory control system.     

Inventory inaccuracies in the wholesale supply chain

The inventory level shown in the Information System contrary to popular belief and assumptions in most academic papers and in spite of the considerable amounts invested in information technology, is often inaccurate. The inventory inaccuracy occurs when the inventory shown in the Information System is not in agreement with the actually available inventory. In this paper, we first describe the major factors generating inventory inaccuracy. Then, we provide situations permitting to manage an inventory system subject to errors. We provide a general framework permitting to model the inventory inaccuracy issue. In particular, we link the inaccuracy issue with the well known random yield problem. The shown link permits us to derive the optimal ordering policy of an inventory framework where demand satisfaction is done based on the inventory records (which are subject to inaccuracies). We also propose an analysis permitting to show the added value of an advanced identification system such as the RFID technology.     

Critical factors affecting the adoption of container security service: The shippers’ perspective

After September 11, 2001, a so-called container security service (CSS) composed of auto-detection and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies has been introduced and commercialized. The objective of this study is to identify the factors affecting intention to adopt the CSS. A novel research model was developed based on the technology acceptance model. Eight hypotheses derived from this model were empirically validated using a questionnaire survey of current users of container transportation and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest that security (SE) strongly effects on the perceived ease of use, attitude and behavioral intention (BI) to adopt the CSS. This implies that system operators should further enhance data security to increase the intention to adopt the CSS.     

The adoption of radical manufacturing technologies and firm survival

The emergence of dramatically innovative, or radical, new manufacturing technologies can force pivotal and life‐threatening decisions for industry competitors. These technologies can represent a huge cost for adopting firms, but may also offer the chance to achieve competitive advantage through superior manufacturing. While prior research has considered a range of production process decisions (e.g., JIT, mass customization) and outcomes for end‐product technologies, little attention has been given to adoption decisions relative to core manufacturing technologies. This study examines an industry's adoption of major manufacturing technologies over several decades and demonstrates that two groups of contingencies related to adoption (e.g., timing and cumulative effects) have a significant impact on firm performance. Based on a sample of over 1,000 firms, the results provide insights into the effects of adoption timing and ‘manufacturing technology bundles’ on firm survival. We also find that adoption of manufacturing technologies prior to the inflection point of the estimated Bass diffusion curve for each technology leads to significant reduction in firm mortality. Thus, we are able to demonstrate the ability of the Bass model to predict the survival outcomes of firms facing manufacturing technology adoption decisions. The strategic implications of these pivotal decisions are considered. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid simulation optimization method for production planning of dedicated remanufacturing

This paper presents a hybrid cell evaluated genetic algorithm (CEGA) for optimization of the dedicated remanufacturing system with simulation. The paper first summarizes the special characteristics and problems of the dedicated remanufacturing. The paper then proposes a simulation model with a prioritized stochastic batch arrival mechanism, considering factors that affect the total profit. Based on the simulation model, the CEGA algorithm is developed to optimize the production planning and control policies for dedicated remanufacturing. A case study is provided based on the remanufacturing facility located at Austin, USA     

Network ties in the outside-in strategy: Contingencies of resource endowments and absorptive capacity

Network ties play an important role in the outside-in strategy for marketing and competitive advantages. However, prior research adopting the outside-in view has not always been clear on the impact of network ties. We propose a contingency view that the mere presence of network ties is not sufficient for performance improvement; rather, network ties need to be combined with resource endowments of the alters and absorptive capacity of the ego. These three components work together and reinforce each other in inducing desirable outcomes. We further apply this contingency view to the adoption of health information technology (HIT) by US hospitals. The results strongly support the contingency view. Our study helps reconcile the conflicting findings on the impact of network ties and contributes to the literature of outside-in strategy and social network.     

EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION ON PRODUCTIVITY AND INDUSTRY GROWTH: A STUDY OF STEEL REFINING FURNACES*

This paper examines the impact of new technology on plant‐level productivity in the Japanese steel industry during the 1950's and 1960's. We estimate the production function, considering the differences in technology between the refining furnaces owned by a plant. We find that a more productive plant was likely to adopt the new technology and that the adoption would be expected to occur immediately following the peak of the productivity level achieved with the old technology. The adoption of the new technology primarily accounted not only for the industry's productivity slowdown but also for the industry's remarkable growth.