Quick Response Healthcare Apparel Supply Chains: Value of RFID and Coordination

Abstract

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an important tool for enhancing the performance of inventory management. Motivated by our real-world observations in local hospitals, we study the case where a hospital, which is using a bar-coding system, considers switching to an RFID system because the RFID technology can potentially enhance the hospital's inventory management under the quick response system (QRS). In order to examine the value of RFID, we develop a formal analytical Bayesian model for the information updating process. We derive the expected value of information of the RFID system, and reveal the conditions in which the RFID system outperforms the barcoding system. In addition, we evaluate the impacts of the QRS toward the expected profit and level of risk of the hospital, the supplier, and the whole supply chain (SC) system. We further propose two policies to help achieve SC coordination. Numerical analyses are reported and important insights are generated.Index Terms-Quick response system (QRS), radio frequency identification (RFID) system, supply chain (SC) management, SC systems.

Fashion retail supply chain management: A review of operational models

“…However, the RFID readings sometimes lead to inaccuracy because the radio waves are absorbed, and the RFID tags are detuned, which is known as the "false-negative" impact that should be carefully considered in the RFID-based inventory management systems (Metzger et al, 2013). Besides, Chan et al (2012) and Chan et al (2015) investigate whether the RFID technology outperforms the traditional bar-coding approach based on the health care apparel industry.…”

“…To be specific, Chan et al (2012) explore the conditions under which the RFID technology achieves better performance than the bar-coding approach with the consideration of safety stock. Later, Chan et al (2015) introduce the RFID system into a quick response supply chain and analyze the value of the information updated.…”

“…Their results show that the fashion retailer always benefits from the quick response policy under the second model. Other applications of the Bayesian information updating approach are observed in Berk et al (2007), Caro and Gallien (2007), Chan et al (2015), Choi (2007), Huang et al (2017b), and Şen and Zhang (2009). Furthermore, O'Neil et al (2016) utilize machine learning to predict the unknown demand without knowing the type of distribution, variance, and mean.…”

“…In order to achieve fast fashion supply chain coordination, strategic contracts must be developed. Such contracts could be inventory service level commitment (Chan et al, 2015;Choi and Chow, 2008), minimum ordering quantity commitment (Chow et al, 2012), price commitment (Choi and Chow, 2008;Chow et al, 2012), minimum quantity with price commitment (Chan et al, 2015), buyback contract (Choi and Chow, 2008), or surplus-sharing and tariff contract (Choi, 2016a). Many works investigate the fast fashion strategies from different perspectives, like Cachon and Swinney (2011) (enhanced design and strategic consumers), Li et al (2014a) (the impact of product return strategy), Choi and Chow (2008) (meanvariance analysis), and Mehrjoo and Pasek (2016) (risk management).…”

Campus Intelligent Safety Supervision System Based on RFID

“…Luo chunbin and Yi Bin analyzed the applications and advantages of RFID in traffic and anti-counterfeiting [6]. In addition, the RFID technology has been used in medical [7,8], manufacturing [9], warehouse material management, waste treatment and other fields [10][11][12], and also largely used in campus management, such as book management in the library [13], laboratory equipment management, attendance management [14], digital campus etc. The process of RFID technology identify the target do not need to mechanical or optical contact, artificial interference and intervention between the system and unrecognized target.…”