Many of the initial developments towards the Internet of Things have focused on the combination of Auto-ID and networked infrastructures in businessto- business logistics and product life cycle applications. However, a future Internet of Things can provide a broader vision and also enable everyone to access and contribute rich information about things and locations. The success of social networks to share experience and personalised insights shows also great potential for integration with business-centric applications. The integration and interoperability with mainstream business software platforms can be enhanced and extended by real-time analytics, business intelligence and agent-based autonomous services. Information sharing may be rewarded through incentives, thus transforming the Internet of Things from a cost-focused experiment to a revenue-generating infrastructure to enable trading of enriched information and accelerate business innovation. Mash-ups and end-user programming will enable people to contribute to the Internet of Things with data, presentation and functionality. Things-generated physical world content and events from Auto-ID, sensors, actuators or meshed networks will be aggregated and combined with information from virtual worlds, such as business databases and Web 2.0 applications, and processed based on new business intelligence concepts. Direct action on the physical world will be supported through machine-interfaces and introduction of agile strategies. This chapter aims to provide a concept for a future architecture of the Internet of Things, including a definition, a review of developments, a list of key requirements and a technical design for possible implementation of the future Internet of Things. As open issues, the evaluation of usability by stakeholders in user-centric as well as business-centric scenarios is discussed and the need for quantifying costs and benefits for businesses, consumers, society and the environment is emphasised. Finally, guidelines are derived, for use by researchers as well as practitioners.

An Architectural Approach Towards the Future Internet of Things

This paper presents an in-depth analysis toward understanding the business value components an organization can derive from adopting radio frequency identification (RFID). Although this subject is currently a hot topic, many organizations are slow in warming up to the idea of using RFID to conduct more effective and efficient business processes. We propose a framework for evaluating the business value of RFID technology, hoping that a better understanding of the business value of RFID will encourage more organizations to implement it. Emphasis is on delivering business value through refining business processes and expanding the business model. We illustrate these concepts drawing on the experience of five early adopters from the Taiwan healthcare industry and formulate this framework as a set of propositions based on relevant literature, cases from pioneers in the field and our intuition. These propositions will need to be validated through empirical evidence. r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Evaluating the business value of RFID: Evidence from five case studies

Despite the recent increase in the adoption and use of social media tools to support firm operations, very little empirical research focusing on small-and medium-sized enterprises SMEs has been conducted to-date. The aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating SME adoption of social media tools. In particular, we assess the impact of organizational, manager and environmental characteristics on SME utilization of the Facebook Events Page. To test our proposed research model, we administered a survey to 453 SME managers. Results of a hierarchical logistic regression indicate that firm innovativeness, firm size, manager's age and industry sector all have a significant impact on social media adoption. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Social Media Tools Adoption and Use by SMES: An Empirical Study

RFID in the warehouse: A literature analysis (1995–2010) of its applications, benefits, challenges and future trends

Der Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) wurde sowohl in der wissenschaftlichen als auch in der popularwissenschaftlichen Literatur in der letzten Zeit viel Aufmerksamkeit eingeraumt. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Technologie, mit der Objekte der Realwelt uber Funkwellen identifiziert werden konnen.

RFID – Radio Frequency Identification

As with all information technologies, there is a necessity to determine the profitability of investments in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) ex ante. A particularly important aspect is the cha...

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fejis.2009.32.pdf

Evaluation of RFID applications for logistics: a framework for identifying, forecasting and assessing benefits

Purpose – There is no doubt about the economic importance of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in industrialised countries. The amount of research on organisational size as a factor of radio frequency identification (RFID) adoption, however, is as yet, minimal. This paper aims to fill that gap by first determining firm‐size specific characteristics of RFID and then using organisational inertia theory to derive the hypothesis that the size and structure of SMEs can be advantageous for the adoption of RFID.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on organisational inertia theory and survey data.Findings – A survey conducted among German enterprises already deploying RFID is used to test our hypothesis. It confirms that smaller enterprise size can make RFID adoption and exploitation of the productivity potential easier. Accordingly, it recommends that SMEs avoid adopting a wait‐and‐see position or restricting themselves to easy‐to‐conduct RFID automation applications.Originality/value – The...

RFID adoption and the role of organisational size

Given the unquestionable importance of performance measurement on the one hand and the promise of large-scale economic gains through the application of RFID technology in business processes on the other, a crucial question arises: To what extent do RFID users measure the economic performance of their applications and how is the success of RFID applications affected by performance measurement? This contribution presents the first empirical evaluation of RFID performance measurement behaviour as far as we know, conducted among 146 German companies. Following an extensive review of performance measurement methods in the RFID field, a categorisation with respect to criteria such as financial and comprehensive measurement is presented. Subsequently, the empirical analysis reveals that partial measurement methods, covering isolated aspects of RFID investments, exhibit the highest usage frequency. Furhermore, we find that RFID users tend to apply several methods in various combinations, depending on factors such as firm size and duration of application. Accordingly, four different types of RFID performance measurement users are derived. Finally, a connection is established between performance measurement and business success of RFID applications: Hence, usage frequency of particular measurement methods is significantly connected to the improvement of target variables such as lead time and labour costs.

Into the Unknown : Measuring the Business Performance of RFID Applications

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enables a contact-free identification of objects either individually or in a bulk mode. The most salient promise of RFID in the realm of logistics is that it reduces object handling costs by automation. However the business potential of RFID reaches well beyond: By providing decision makers with a more detailed, precise, and timely information base, qualitative and indirect benefits can be realized and RFID can be turned into an enabler for farreaching process transformations. This paper derives a classification framework for RFID benefits that can be used for profiling benefits of envisioned RFID initiatives. The profiles are designed to support a targeted selection of benefit measurement approaches as well as for an identification of relevant gaps in the exploitation of the technology. Two complementary case studies are introduced and discussed to illustrate how resulting benefit profiles can be utilized.

Profiling Benefits of RFID Applications

Based on a cross-sectoral survey among 114 RFID-using companies in Germany, the constitutive factors for performance improvement are evaluated. Analyzing realized target variables such as lead time or production downtime, we can show that the performance-enhancing impact of RFID can be ascribed to the three effects automation, informatization, and transformation. However, automation alone – i.e. a reduction of manual data acquisition activities through RFID – does not systematically contribute to performance enhancement. Rather, we found evidence indicating that it is necessary to exploit improved information about enterprise resources (informatization) and/or to re-engineer business processes (transformation) on the basis of RFID. No matter what sector an enterprise belongs to, investments in RFID technology that are exclusively aimed at an automated acquisition of information are inadvisable. This might be of special interest to companies who are facing a mandate in the near future.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=amcis2008

Daniel Gille

Papers

Evaluation of RFID applications for logistics: a framework for identifying, forecasting and assessing benefits

RFID adoption and the role of organisational size

Into the Unknown : Measuring the Business Performance of RFID Applications

Profiling Benefits of RFID Applications

Performance Improvements Based on RFID - Empirical Findings from a Cross-Sectional Study