June
4th, 2009 – Wollongong, NSW Australia
/ Montreal, QC, Canada
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Abstract
RFID technology is defined as a wireless automatic identification and data capture (AIDC)
technology and is considered as “the next big thing” in the management and “the next
revolution in supply chain”. Recently, the topic has attracted the interest of the industrial
community as well as the scientific community. Following this tendency, this paper applies an
Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) for an RFID-based University Laboratory. For
practitioners, the paper provides some insights into the set-up and use of RFID laboratory in
university settings, and at the same time, it offers a set of hypotheses that can be empirically
tested.
1. Introduction
Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) technology has been regarded as one
of the “most pervasive computing technologies
in history” (Roberts, 2006 p. 18). In the
context of management, the technology has
been viewed as “the next big thing” (Wyld,
2006 p. 154) and “the next revolution in
supply chain” (Srivastava 2004 p. 1), since
it allows “any tagged entity to become a
mobile, intelligent, communicating component
of the organization’s overall information
infrastructure” (Curtin et al., 2007 p.
88). However, the concept behind RFID is
not new. Indeed, it was used for the first
time during the World War II by the British
Air Force to differentiate allied aircraft
from enemy aircraft.
Though the high potential
of RFID technology in terms of operational
performance optimisation is obvious, some
key questions remain. For example: How should
an appropriate business case be constructed?
What is the impact on the firm when RFID
is used with only a portion of one’s trading
partners? Will RFID have similar impacts
inside and outside an organization? In the
same light, it is worth knowing what considerations
are to be taken into account at the industry’s
level, what factors are conducive to the
adoption of RFID by a firm, wether in an
interorganizational context or internationally;
other issues are to know if traditional
IT adoption research paradigms are appropriate,
if new performance measurement approaches
shall be required to realize value from
RFID, how a firm can make efficient use
of real-time item/operator entity RFID tag
placement, as well as of real-time systems-based
decision-making. Moreover, one may ask how
RFID and real-time decisionmaking will change
managerial capabilities, who does the tagging,
owns the technology, the data, gets the
value, pays for readers that benefit to
multiple parties, or drives the effort to
build standards, etc. (Curtin et al., 2007).
Contributing to this debate, many RFID Universitybased
Laboratories are emerging in the world.
However, the complexity nature of RFID system
turns the set-up of any RFID University-based
Laboratory into a very challenging exercise,
as it is time consuming, requires an appropriate
choice of the various components of the
system and support from various actors within
RFID industry. The process is even more
challenging as there is no theoretical assistance
for universities. The objective of this
paper is to partially fill this gap by (i)
applying an Information Systems Design Theory
(ISDT) for RFID University-based Laboratory
and (ii) providing validation of our proposals.
Section 2 presents Information
Systems Design Theories. In section 3, a
literature review on RFID technology and
on an RFID University-based Laboratory is
presented, followed in section 4 by an Information
Systems Design Theories for an RFID University-based
Laboratory. Hypothesis testing appears in
Section 5 while the conclusion and future
research feature in section 6.
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