بررسی مزایای بالقوه و چالش های مرتبط با یکپارچگی اینترنت اشیا در زنجیره تامین Examining potential benefits and challenges associated with the Internet of Things integration in supply chains

1. Introduction The Internet of Things (IoT) as a term has been around for about 20 years and it first appeared in 1999. The term was coined in the context of supply chain management (SCM) by Kevin Ashton who was working on a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AutoID lab to explore ways to improve business performance through linking the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology information to the internet (Gubbi et al., 2013). There is no common definition for the IoT but it simply relates to the integration of physical objects communicating with one another and through the internet to achieve some useful objectives (Botta et al., 2014; Whitmore et al., 2015; Wortmann and Flüchter, 2015). IoT facilitates a safe and trustworthy way of exchanging information related to goods and services in a global supply chain (Mishra et al., 2016). IoT will be less a revolution than a valuable (and welcome) evolution that will contribute to the next wave of productivity gains driven by information technology transformation (Behrendt et al., 2017). Kumar et al. (2015) identified 13 critical success factors, based on an extensive literature review of 66 journal articles, for successful implementation of SCM that include: top management commitment; development of effective SCM strategy; devoted resources for supply chain; logistics synchronization; use of modern technologies; information sharing with supply chain members; forecasting of demand on point-of-sale; trust development in supply chain partners; developing just-in-time capabilities; development of reliable suppliers; higher flexibility in production system; focus on core strengths; and long-term vision for survival and growth. Our study shows how these success factors are impacted by the adoption of IoT. The IoT is believed to bring tangible business benefits (Borgia, 2014; Madakam et al., 2015; Russo et al., 2015). The adoption of the IoT has the potential to improve operational processes, reduce costs and risks due to its transparency, traceability, adaptability, scalability, and flexibility (Zhou et al., 2015). However, the challenges facing the emergence of the IoT are numerous (technical and social) and these challenges must be overcome in order to ensure effective IoT adoption and diffusion (Whitmore et al., 2015). Lee and Lee (2015) state that there is still a paucity of studies on the social, behavioral, economic, and managerial aspects of the IoT. This makes it very challenging for companies to make informed decisions as regards IoT adoption/implementation. Mishra et al. (2016) state that there are limited, if any, studies that look into the relationship between IoT adoption and the increase of organizational and supply chain performance. The same reference adds that the adoption process and the enablers, drivers, barriers, and models of IoT adoption by organizations and supply chain should be explored. Whitmore et al. (2015) conclude that IoT is not well represented in the management literature and it is dominated by research relating to IoT technologies.