Evaluation of the economic feasibility of RFID in the supply chain

The distributed value added in the automotive network enables the manufacturing of customized products at lower production costs. However the coordination of the processes requires an absolute transparency and a high coordination effort within the companies and among them. To reduce operating expenses the companies bank on a cooperative implementation of the RFID technology. Unfortunately this is associated with high investments, complex process transformations and technical issues. Furthermore the identification of the benefits is a major challenge. Based on this, it was necessary to develop a method for the evaluation of the economic feasibility of RFID in the supply chain. This method was introduced in order to prove the cost effectiveness of investments. These focused primarily on identifying and quantifying all factors influencing the economy. In addition, analytical methods were developed for the generation of a broad decision basis. An overview about the single steps of the method is described in the following article.