Technologies for Supply Chain Management

This assignment delves into the various technologies transforming supply chain management. It examines technologies like RFID, BIM, GIS, and blockchain, highlighting their applications in areas such as traceability, product visibility, and inventory management. The focus is on understanding how these technologies mitigate challenges like the bullwhip effect and counterfeiting, ultimately enhancing efficiency and transparency within the supply chain.

Running head: STRATEGIC SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Strategic Supply Chain Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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STRATEGIC SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Introduction:
Supply chain management is the
management and organization of all
information and materials within the
logistics procedure varying from
attainment of the raw materials to
delivering to the customers. Within the
chain of supply management, barcode is a
popular and significant factor that is being
utilized for tracking the products for a long
time. This technology is an automatic
identification technology. A thorough
investigation of the popularity of barcode
in the supply chain management indicates
to different factors within the chain
management. As opined by Beier et al.
(2017) the Radio frequency identification
technology or RFID technology is also a
suitable substitute. This technology is also
gaining much popularity as the barcode
technology is causing multiple
technological issues for the businesses. It
has also been said that with this much
rising popularity of the RFID technology,
it is quite distinguished that the barcode
technology is coming to an end. The past
evidences regarding the barcode
technology also indicate that the barcodes
tend to have some limitations and
technological issues (Purcell and Levy
2016). However, the RFID technology is a
comparatively new technology that is
being adapted widely, yet it is not
dominating the business sphere. Within the
supply chain management the digital
ubiquity and the data analysis tools are
major factors to track the products, as the
producer of the products is capable of
tracking their products, especially its reach
to the customers at the end of the supply
chain (Wong and Guo 2014). However,
there are several factors that also act
against the proliferation of the RFID
technology. This article will target the
related factors with the barcode technology
and how the technology is failing due to its
primary technological issues and failing to
maintain the institutional factors. This

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article will also discuss the issues with
RFID technology. Recommendations will
be made accordingly.
Technical Issues with Barcode and
RFID technology
While an emerging technology is
being successful, it tends to start with the
quantifiable advancements, especially
considering the technical capabilities. The
barcode technology involves several early
developments that make the barcode
technology more advanced and user
friendly (Irizarry, Karan and Jalaei 2013).
These factors include the easier usage of
barcodes, LOS or the line of site properties
and reliability of the technology. The
technological progress of the further
technologies tends to spark interest from
the businesses in the technologies. The
major factors are:
Affordability:
The barcode technology has been
popular within the business sphere due to
its simple usage. Since the inception of the
technology, the production cost of the
barcode printing has dropped to a great
extent. Two major ingredients that are
necessary for the barcode printing are the
paper and ink (Dabbene, Gay and Tortia
2014). These are comparatively less
expensive than the other alternative
technologies. The RFID technology uses
the silicon chips which make it more
expensive than any other technology. The
labels in barcode can also produce major
media savings for any organization
because the conventional paper forms tend
to be larger than the typical barcode labels.

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Li (2013) also indicates that if a company
has already developed the barcode
technological infrastructure, the printing
costs come to nearly nothing. Therefore it
can also be indicated that the barcode
technology has already matured with the
course of time, therefore it has turned into
more affordable choice for the
organizations. For any small scale
applications, the only required ingredients
are a small database, the software for
barcode and barcode scanners that can
monitor the usage of tools. Therefore this
make the barcode technology makes a low
cost and helpful solution for tracking the
products (Musa, Gunasekaran and Yusuf
2014). For example, the development of
the liner less barcode labeling has
decreased the media costs to almost twenty
five percent while it also increased the
production of barcodes in each roll,
therefore it also results into less wastage as
well.
Usability
The most important factor in
making the barcode usage successful is its
easy usage. The labels of barcode can be
easily printed, therefore it offers great
automation and it also reduces as much as
it is possible (Irizarry, Karan and Jalaei
2013). With the right hardware, software
and proper infrastructure, the barcode
system also provides automation which
also simplifies the collection of
information, processing them and tracking.
The automation also provided more
productive gains for the organizations such
as Procter & Gamble (Loy et al. 2016).
The gathered information from the barcode
usage can also be tracked and distributed
throughout all the levels of the
organization, even to the partners of the
organization for any advanced
management processes. Moreover it is a

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lot easier for the organization to interact
with the barcodes. Therefore this
technology has the capability of being
implemented to different business
applications.
Continuous innovations and
improvements
The barcode technology has
evolved continuously which has also
helped the technology solving different
kinds of business challenges and problems
within the supply chain management. Until
the 1900s, the barcode systems were only
capable of reading single symbols as it
could only read the storage limitations and
the hardware. In recent times a huge
innovation has taken place with the
technologies of barcodes, therefore now
the barcodes can also capture the remote
controlled data through scanners by
utilizing wireless technologies. Chong,
Chan and Ooi (2014) have indicated that
the famous supermarket chain, Wal-Mart
had arranged more than 300,000 wireless
scanners. However the remote data
capturing system was only limited to their
specific network range, but the mobile
phone scanners do not have much
limitation. This wide-ranged supply chain
management would permit all the
employees scanning the items within the
supply chain in spite of their region and
location. Ramanathan, Ramanathan and
Ko (2014) has opined that there is no such
limitation in the innovation procedure of
barcode technology. In fact, it was quite
ironic to state that at the RFID Australasia
Exhibition in the year 2005, barcodes were
used for delegating the registration.
Therefore it can be said that the continuous
developments are acknowledged within
the contemporary business world.
Accuracy and Reliability
Within the supply chain, accuracy
is a paramount factor. Most of the
organizations tend to claim that the

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barcode technology provides around
99.99% accuracy. On the other hand, the
manual data collection process can only
offer 80-85% data accuracy and a slower
process (Bruno 2017). In this respect,
barcodes are more advantageous than the
RFID technology. This has been found out
at the San Francisco International Airport,
while they were barcoding the luggage.
However, another organization that has
been using the barcode technology for
monitoring their tool using also found the
barcodes to be damaged after a point of
time. In order to counter such issues the
organization started engraving the
barcodes on each tool, so that they can
later manually read those codes if they are
damaged. This innovative step may save
the barcodes to be replaced by RFID
technology. Therefore it can also be
emphasized that such manual techniques
are still necessary for possible failures of
the system.
Environmental impacts
The barcodes require having
barcode labels that are visible clearly for
making the scanning process easier.
Therefore this may also lead to potential
damaging of the barcodes. For preventing
possible damages, the barcodes should be
comparatively clean and should be handled
in a gentle manner within an abrasion free
surrounding and should not be exposed in
the harsh environment (Aung and Chang
2014). In addition to that the barcodes
users should also have a clear and clean
optics for reading the codes. Furthermore,
there are several ways that can damage the
barcodes easily through usual every day
usages. Therefore such situations have led
the organizations to opt for the RFID
technology for tracking the products
through supply chain management.

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Institutional standards:
For any successful consumption of
any new technological activities, standards
should be maintained, especially related to
regulations. With the continuous
evolvement of the barcode technology,
several companies have adopted the
barcode technology in place of any other
alternate one. This has also played a major
role in upgrading and uptake the
technological innovations that had caused
significant effect on the international
supply chain. Well-established companies
such as Wal-Mart who had been struggling
for a long time with the influenced barcode
system and standards, they had also
convinced their associated partners for
adopting this technique (de Almeida et al.
2015). The major reasons of adopting
barcode over any other technology are:
Established standard quality
Barcode standards have been
widely accepted in the supply chain
management due to its acknowledged
quality standards. Even if the technology
had been invented in the year 1949, it took
the technology few years to be accustomed
with the global supply chain management.
The two most well-established standards
of barcodes are UPC or Universal Product
Code and the EAN or European Article
Numbering. The later is mostly utilized for
the retail sector. These two systems have
been prevalent in the barcode
technologies, which later also led to the
formation of the system that incorporates
both the standards. The UPC and EAN
standard has been dominant all over the
world, mostly for the retail applications
(Fernie 2014). Therefore this also ensures
that the organizations are adopting a
universal standard that concerns all the
associated parties. Therefore the other
stakeholders can also reuse the information
engraved in the barcode all through the
supply chain which also adds value to the
products.

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Continuous improvements
The barcode technology has
experienced continuous improvements in
the quality standards, therefore this
technology has been considered as the
most accepted auto identification process
within the supply chain. Different
industries such as AIAG or Automotive
Industry Action Group, HIBCC or Health
Industry Business Communications
Council and EIA or Electronic Industries
Alliance have developed their own
standards that are industry specific
(Ramundo, Taisch and Terzi 2016).
Therefore these standards also allow the
global compliance in the specific
industries which also allows the product
shipment identification among different
partners within the supply chain. The
success of the particular barcode
technology can also cause serious concern
over the potential of running out of the
numerical space in the barcodes as
multiple organizations are registered in the
specific UPC code for their product
identification. However, there is a major
limitation for the barcode technology that
the code is not capable of including a large
amount of information. Even though the
standard organizations have ensured that
they align their technologies with their
supply chain model, however the new
organizations fail to do so (Bernhardt
2017). For instance, it can be said that the
2D barcodes can accumulate millions
bytes of data within the barcode which is
almost similar to the entire U.S
constitution. The easily readable scanners,
efficient usage and error free information
due to the inbuilt technology for detection
and checking for the errors have made the
barcode usage more comfortable and user-
friendly. For instance, General Motors
have facilitated the development of 2D

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barcodes for not only recording the
incoming products, but also providing
sufficient information to the employees for
directing to move them in different
positions. Therefore it creates a huge cost
savings as well.
Organizational factors:
After the established institutional
and technical systems, the organizations
tend to put more efforts for improving the
control and efficiency of the supply
change management system. The large
super market chains such as Wal-Mart had
adopted the barcode technology and forced
their associates to do the same (Parreño-
Marchante et al. 2014). In this section, the
factors that have played an important
factor for adopting the technology over the
RFID technology will be discussed. The
major factors are the continuous attempts
for increasing the efficiency of the supply
chain management, lower expense and
gaining the competitive edge in the
international market (Smith-Ditizio and
Smith 2017). There are other returns of the
technology as well, such as utilizing the
assets, enhancing the quality control
procedure etc.
Tracking the assets
Most of the organizations have
adopted the barcode technology so that
they can manage the resources in an
effective way. The labels of barcodes
contain the serial numbers that can be
considered as the nameplate identification;
therefore it is easier for the management to
track their products. The barcodes can be
associated with the database of the
organization for holding the additional
data regarding the products such as the
maintenance schedule, cost, physical
features and conditions and several other
factors (Hu et al. 2013). There are several
organizations that use their barcode
systems for monitoring their tools. Before
implementing the system, the company did
not have any control over the borrowing of
the tools. Therefore they were not capable
of tracking or tracing whether any

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contractor or employee had borrowed the
tool. Therefore this has resulted into a
great loss for the company as they had to
buy a number of new tools over and over
again. After the successful implementation
of the barcode technology, the
management of the tools is easier. The
company can track their tools and they
now also have the capability of charging
any employee or contractor for borrowing
tools. In this way, several product
packages can also be tracked while they
move through the supply chain. Utilizing
the barcode system has made their tracking
of the objects much easier. If these items
are not managed in an effective way, they
tend to be lost at the facility of the
customers and cannot be removed.
Therefore the barcode technology
empowers the organizations for identifying
the products permanently and scans them
through recoding of the location
information and any other related
information so that they can move freely.
Tracking the inventory
The barcode technology also acts
as an effectual tool for tracking the
primary inventory. Therefore the issue of
technological issues can be solved through
the barcode technology. Chong et al.
(2015) has shown that a baking company
has reduced its distribution and inventory
costs by around $3 million within the first
year of implementation of the products and
it had also permitted the organization to
have accurate information within time for
their inventory.

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Traceability and management of
Inventory
The primary purpose of using
barcode technology within the supply
chain management was to control the
inventory of the organization. At the
higher level, the barcode technology also
allows the organizations to minimize the
product searching timing as the barcode
includes the information of quantity and
location information. This technology also
allows the companies in ensuring whether
they can have sufficient quantity of
products in their inventories while it also
helps enhancing the efficiency and
productivity of the organization. With the
right usage of the barcode systems the
companies can incorporate the BTO or
built to order system and JIT or just in
time inventory management practices
(Bottani et al. 2014). However the
organizations should be equipped with the
computers for meeting the demands as
they also reduce the labor costs to a great
extent as it also reduces manual steps.
Barcodes also offer a definite method for
the organizations for meeting all the
necessary requirements for tracking the
products in the inventory. The barcodes
tends to assist the organizations to reduce
the levels of the operational inventory and
increase the working capital (Purcell and
Levy 2016). For instance, in terms of
barcodes using, Wal-Mart has made
significant efforts. This organization uses
the wireless scanners so that it can benefit
both the consumers and the organization.
This also means that the store timings can
be flexible as the employees can make
changes in prices, view the history of sales
and place orders through the online
system. Adjusting the fixed prices of the
popular items is a vital ability within the
global supply chain. Therefore this also
helps the management to know and track
whether any particular product quality is
running low.

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Economical consideration:
There are several organizations that
incorporated the RFID technology but later
they realized that the barcode technology
was a financially saving. Once the barcode
deployment in the supply chain
management has been approached, the
organization can make larger saving by
reducing the level of errors, increasing
visibility and reducing the labors.
There is no such doubt about the
fact that barcode technology is way to
faster than any other technological entries,
especially the manual keyboard data entry
that tends to dependent of the manual
labor. Therefore it can be inaccurate, slow
and expensive. However, on the other
hand, the information included in the
barcode can be read in a second, therefore
it gives the employees and the
organization to collect immediate
information about any specific products.
Li (2013) has noted that the manual
information gathering is a lot time
consuming that the barcode as the initially
the information should be recorded, later it
had to transcribed properly and entered
into the computer system appropriately.
Recommendation:
Even after the prolonged
discussion, it can be said that it is very
difficult comparing the mature and
established automatic technology like
barcode and the emerging technology such
as RFID technology. These differences
mean that these two technologies are not
on the same level as one of them has an

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extensive testing within the commercial
sphere; on the other hand the other one has
a limited exposure in the commercial field.
Regardless of the inherent information,
there are several disadvantages and
advantaged of both the RFID and barcode
technology. It should also be noted that
there are several factors that can be
considered as the positive sides for the
RFID technology as well.
The RFID technology uses a Non
line of scanning and is capable of multiple
automatic readings. However on the other
hand the barcode technology is not
capable of using multiple reading at the
same time. The RFID technology also
includes an enhanced forecasting and
visibility of the products therefore it is
easier for the organizations to track their
assets through this technologies. As this
technology is an improved version of asset
tracking, it also uses an item level tracking
and enhanced asset utilization. It involves
rich information as it can store more
information than the barcode technology.
It is a durable and robust technology that
enhances the security system and
improves the management of inventory.
Therefore, it is more helpful for using the
RFID technology as it provides a better
and great experience for the organizations
while tracking their inventories and
products. However, there are several
disadvantages of the RFID technologies as
well. The cost of using the technology is
higher as the company has to implement
new infrastructure and tags along with
providing proper training and
development sessions to the employees.
This technology is not yet dominating the
market as it is an immature one. There are
several deployment issues and limitations
in the infrastructure for RFID technology.
In addition to that, this technology can
also enhance the privacy concerns of the
customers.
On the other hand the barcode
technology is an already established
system that is easier in using and is
affordable in price. In addition to that, the

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continuous improvement of the
technology for tracking the inventory and
established standards of quality enhance
the barcode use within the business
sphere. However, the restricted
traceability and limited visibility are two
factors that made several companies to opt
for the alternative technologies such as
RFID technology. This technology is also
prone to errors; therefore it can increase
the costs of usages as well.
However, it is quite difficult to opt
between both the technologies. Evaluating
the trends, it can be said that it is quite
important for the organizations to have a
thorough insight into how the relationship
between RFID and barcode will evolve in
the future. Most of the organizations have
already invested a large amount of money
in implementing the barcode systems.
Other than that, the early users of the
RFID technologies have faced larger
amount of risks already. Evaluating the
results, it is quite evident the RFID
technology may rule the supply chain
management industry in future but in the
present times, barcode does not have much
competition. The companies which are
adapting the RFID technology should be
well aware of the risks that can be
prevalent soon. Moreover these two
technologies have some kinds of
advantages and disadvantages, but both the
automatic IF technologies can enable these
for using as conjunction. As a result to that
if any organization uses both the
technologies simultaneously, will be in a
favorable position. Therefore, they can
utilize he inbuilt advantages for yielding
the best results.

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