Simulation of RFID-aided Supply Chains: Case Study of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Abstract

Integrating RFID technology in current supply chains involves the development and testing of various IT systems, such as event repositories. Their development requires excessive real-world event data to verify architecture designs, access control, response time behavior, etc. Due to lack of industry-wide adoption of RFID technology, real-world event data for global implementations is not available, today. In this work, we present a configurable simulator for RFID-aided supply chains that is capable to create consistent and realistic event data. We used our generated event data as the basis for getting real-world event data to define requirements, develop, and test RFID systems with concrete industry-specific event data before the industrial adoption of RFID technology succeeded. As a result, we were able to verify IT components in EPC global networks with real-world data long before concrete industry data is available.