Two Case Studies on RFID Initiatives: Testing the Impact of IT Infrastructure Integration and Supply Chain Process Integration

Background

This study is part of larger exploration on the importance of RFID in the supply chain on account of its potential to render information visibility that will, in turn, solve a number of supply chain problems such as the “bullwhip effect” or distortion of signals down the value chain due to lack of accurate information. Previous published work on the larger study has featured the relationships between the elements that constitute IT infrastructure integration and supply chain process integration and four system deployment outcomes that are typical of a supply chain: exploitation, exploration, operational efficiency, and market knowledge creation (Angeles, 2009; Angeles, 2008). In another related study, the relationships between absorptive capacity attributes or organizational routines and business processes used by firms to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit knowledge, and two system outcomes, operational efficiency and market knowledge creation were explored (Angeles, 2010). In this second study, the ability of IT infrastructure integration and supply chain process integration to moderate the relationships between the independent and dependent variables was also tested. The study presented in this paper is a piece of the aforementioned more comprehensive inquiry, that focuses on the relationship between the perceptions of study respondents of the importance of seven adoption attributes of RFID and two system outcomes, operational efficiency and market knowledge creation. More importantly once again, the ability of IT infrastructure integration and supply chain process integration to moderate these relationships was investigated.