Question

1) Find a company or organization that successfully has adopted and implemented RFID and explain how RFID improved its operations, process, and profitability.
2) Discuss what do you think about the future of RFID in business.

Answer 1

Amazon Go Stores -

Retail stores have always been imagined with long lines for checkout and unwanted theft of items from the shelves. In such a process where customers are directly engaging with the products in a retail stores, it was difficult to get rid of both the problems. However, Amazon Go stores are the perfect examples of utilizing RFID for improving the Operations, process and profitability. With the future oriented retail stores, Amazon used RFID to identify the customers and skip the checkout process by directly and digitally transacting the amount from the Amazon account of the customer who picks a product from the store during shopping. It explores the experience of customers to dorectly grab the product from the shelves and leave. The related amount will be deducted from the account and the digital receipt will be sent through e-mails. Amazon used RFID to access customer's accounts and also the products which are being picked from the shelves. This improved the process directly.

Operations - The RFID tags in the warehouse are used by amazon to identifty the location, availability, expiry dates and prices of the products and act accordingly. Hence, operations are improved.

Profitability - Technology has provided a WOW factor to the customers to go and shop from Amazon Store. Also, the inventory costs were reduced drastically. The costs due to the wasted products were also reduced using RFIDs. Hence, profitability is also improved.

2. Future of RFID in Business -

Considering the present scenario of COVID outbreak, it is clearly observable that public places will not be feasible for quite sometime. However, brick and mortar retail stores can create disruption by reducing the number of people waiting in the store for checkout. Digital technology through RFID tags will enable least involvement of staff and optimal service time. This can disrupt the future reatiling industry in future.

Also, using the RFID in warehouses has shown the positive impacts in almost all the applications for large warehouses.