The contributions of radio frequency identification technology to supply-chain management

When today?s changing and developing conditions are taken into account, we see thatcustomer needs change rapidly as well. The only way to survive in these diffucultconditions is to foresee the needs of customers and meet these needs as quickly aspossible with minimum expense. That?s why businesses want to make their supplychains more effective. In this way, the determination of needs, the supply of feedstockand semi-finished products, the warehouse and expedition of the products in time willbe possible. All these results will not only make the businesses advantegous againsttheir rivals but also increase the satisfaction of the customers.Stock, warehouse and distribution operations have a great importance in supply-chain,therefore, the efficiency of these operations directly affect all the chains of supplychain.Various information technologies are used in stock, warehouse and generalsupply-chain operations. Of all these technologies, Barcode Technology has providedthe traceability of warehouse and distribution operations and made an importantcontribution to the effective supply-chain management. However, today?s growingconditions make this technology inadequate to meet the needs. In warehouse operations,products are placed on shelves after their barcodes have been read and the orders can befulfilled in by scanning the barcodes of all the products. Similarly, the products indistribution operations are scanned at each point, which make the process traceable. Onthe other hand, all these operations slow down the general process and it may includesome mistakes since the barcode technology requires the use of human. At this point, amore advanced information technology is needed. RFID technology comes forwardhere.RFID technology make all the processes, especially stock and warehouse managementthat affects the supply chain the most, independent from human and minimizes humanerror. The application example at the end of thesis tells how barcode technology is usedin Horoz Logistics warehouse operations and how it can be developed by using RFIDtechnology. In this way, the differences between barcode technology and RFIDtechnology that needs less human power can be seen clearly.