A Survey of RFID Awareness and Use in the UK Logistics Industry

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the readiness of UK logistics companies to adopt RFID technology, trying to understand whether, and when, it will be adopted in large scale. The first barrier to a new technologies adoption is awareness - are the potential users aware of the new technology and its potential benefits? Once potential users are aware of a new technology more practical and economic questions come to the fore - difficulty of implementation, availability, standards, cost, privacy, compatibility with existing business processes, etc. The paper investigates these issues and contrasts them against the interesting features and achieved benefits of RFID. A model of RFID diffusion is presented which shows that a high level of awareness (81%) is not yet matched by adoption (17%). However, diffusion has just overtaken the inflection point of the S-shaped curve that models the diffusion of an innovation, and is now approaching the stage in which the adoption rate is rapidly increasing. Adoption is being led by large companies. Cost, lack of practical knowledge about application, difficulty of demonstrating ROI and difficulty of attaching tags were the major barriers to adoption, followed by technological issues (integration, reliability, lack of standards). To sum up, in supply chain management, it is likely that UHF passive tags will be the most commonly used, and that pallets, cases and carton tagging, rather than item tagging, will be the most popular application of RFID technology. Moreover, it is predicted that, in the early phase, big companies will adopt it, paving the way to wider diffusion once return on investment is demonstrated, best practices developed and costs fall.