سیستم های RFID و ERP در مدیریت زنجیره تامین RFID and ERP systems in supply chain management

1. Introduction Since the early 1990s, global market competition has dramatically intensified (Oghazi, 2009). Globalization, continuous changes in customer demand, and technological breakthroughs have brought about calls for more comprehensive and updated business models and practices (Oghazi, 2009). In this regard, the application of information technology (IT) in business processes has the potential to offer new business opportunities for firms to move forward in the increasingly competitive global market (Oghazi, 2009). IT infrastructure enables organizations to exploit their competencies, contributing positively to their performance (Santhanam and Hartono, 2003; Bardhan et al., 2006). In this context, enterprise systems (ESs) are considered to be one of the most significant subsets of IT to have arisen over the last two decades (Cotteleer and Bendoly, 2006). ESs are comprised of hardware and software that are aimed at standardization as well as integration of business processes and data being used across an organization (Davenport, 1998; Dorantes et al., 2013). Companies implement ESs in order to achieve higher efficiency (Oghazi, 2009). They may also adopt ESs because of external pressure in favor of adoption (Oghazi, 2009). In this regard, since the mid-1990s, US firms have increasingly invested in efforts to implement ESs into their organizational structure (Oghazi, 2009). On the other hand, the nature of business competition has switched from rivalries among individual firms to the competition of supply chains. In other words, to achieve success in today’s market, supply chains are competing against one another rather than individual organizations (Lee, 2005). Christopher (1998) asserts that supply chain management (SCM) includes the linkage of value-creating activities that occur downstream with upstream supply chain organizations in order to deliver higher product value to end customers. In this regard, breakthroughs within IT can potentially enable supply chains to develop stronger competitive advantages (Oghazi, 2009). In line with this, Li (2012) argues that research pertaining to ESs as a subset of IT within the dimensions of SCM has been fragmented and is limited in scope. Research in this area is also incompatible, because the results often provide paradoxical answers in which some research supports the implementation of such systems, while other research opposes it (Oghazi, 2009). Based on this finding, the research question, which is designed to address this fragmentation in the literature, is as follows: RQ1. How can ESs, in particular radio frequency identification (RFID) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), enhance supply chain performance? This paper strives to contribute to existing literature by presenting conceptual research that encompasses a comprehensive review which links the extant literature pertaining to SCM and ESs to supply chain performance. To do so, according to the relevant logic of a conceptual paper, the definition of SCM and ESs will be presented in depth in Section 2. In the third section, the subsets of ESs and supply chain integration as a practice of SCM will be examined in detail. Also in Section 3, findings from the literature review regarding the impact of ESs on supply chain performance will also be identified. In Section 4, the conceptual model that links the results of the literature review will be discussed in detail. Finally, the research conclusions will be presented in Section 5.