Simulating and Evaluating the Impact of RFID on Warehousing Operations: a case study

摘要

Recent advances in information technology have raised the issue of the extent to which the potential benefits gained by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) outweigh the value of investment in such an initiative. Hence, this has become a matter of considerable concern and debate for both practitioners and academics alike. In view of the pre-mature level of RFID implementation and the analytical difficulties in the modeling of RFID deployment, it seems rational to resort to the technique of discrete event simulation. As a result, this paper presents an application of simulation to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) in order to determine the relative effectiveness of RFID within warehousing operations (receiving, put-away, picking, and shipping). Empirical data has been gathered from a company that deals with paper trading and uses its own assets and resources to provide a variety of services (including provisional warehousing, transportation management, distribution management, and freight consolidation) on behalf of other companies. Results indicate that RFID alleviates the ill effects of manual scanning and verification by automating the warehousing processes; eliminating errors, the labor intervention and the required time to check for any discrepancies, while increasing the throughput speed of product and the inventory accuracy.