The use of RFID and sensor networks to optimize enterprise operations and logistics

One of the biggest challenges faced by today's supply chain is machine and equipment failures which impacts the producers' ability to meet their scheduled demand and lead to logistics delays and quality issues, especially when perishable items are transported. This research work eliminates, or at least decreases the costs pertaining to the impact of machine and equipment failures on supply chain operations, particularly on production and transportation, like out of stock costs, lost sales cost and penalties imposed by customers. Two relatively new technologies for the production and logistics domain, RFID and wireless sensor networks, provide the needed sensing, processing, data storing and communication capabilities necessary for monitoring and decision making. This dissertation proposes an RFID-sensor network-based monitoring and control system designed to help producers avoid disruption of supply chain operations and their resulting costs because of machine and equipment failures.;The dissertation is structured as follows: the first section depicts the overall architecture of the monitoring and control system, both within the producer's enterprise boundaries, as well as across the supply chain. Section II details the internal enterprise monitoring and control system architecture and highlights the benefits of implementing it through comparative simulation studies that investigates the performance of the production operations in terms of productivity and quality with and without using RFID and sensing technology. Then, Section III provides the implementation solution for the supply chain and logistics part of the proposed monitoring and control system. Simulation and economic decision models are presented for re-routing transportation of perishable products across cold supply chains. Finally, the fourth section of the dissertation looks at the internal architecture of the monitoring and control system, specifically, at the distribution and number of the sensor network nodes in order to collect accurate data when the system is deployed within the enterprise and across the supply chain and logistics routes. The needed reliability and coverage of the deployed sensor network are evaluated through computational and simulation models.;The experimental results obtained for different production and logistics operational scenarios prove the cost benefits associated with the implementation of the proposed RFID-sensor network-based system. The conclusions section of the dissertation highlights the most significant results.