A Literature Review of the Emerging Field of IoT Using RFID and Its Applications in Supply Chain Management

The Internet of Things (IoT) envisions an ecosystem where smart and interconnected objects can sense surrounding changes, communicate with each other, process information and take active roles in decision making. Optimizing supply chain performance is a primary concern of manufacturing and logistics organizations. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is helping organizations to build automated and interconnected smart environment by object identification and tracking, motivating the first step towards an IoT-enabled world. This chapter attempts to understand extant literature studying applications of RFID in implementing the IoT in supply chain management. We categorize extant literature, firstly, based on research methodology and secondly, based on supply chain processes. We find that presently academic activity is around conceptualizing the usability of RFID in the IoT with limited analytical and empirical evidence. Supply chain processes such as demand planning, procurement, retail shelf space management and product returns are prospective areas for interesting future research.