A systematic literature review of RFID in supply chain management

Purpose: The findings of this paper throw light on the focal research areas within RFID in the supply chain, which serves as an effective guideline for future research in this area. This research, therefore, contributes to filling the gap by carrying out an SLR of contemporary research studies in the area of RFID applications in supply chains. To date, SLR augmented with BA has not been used to study the developments in RFID applications in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach: We analyze 556 articles from years 2001 to date using Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Contemporary bibliometric analysis (BA) tools are utilized. First, an exploratory analysis is carried, out revealing influential authors, sources, regions, among other key aspects. Second, a co-citation work analysis is utilized to understand the conceptual structure of the literature, followed by a dynamic co-citation network to reveal the evolution of the field. This is followed by a multivariate analysis is performed on top-100 cited papers, and k-means clustering is carried out to find optimal groups and identify research themes. The influential themes are then pointed out using factor analysis. Findings: An exploratory analysis is carried out using BA tools to provide insights into factors such as influential authors, production countries, top-cited papers and frequent keywords. Visualization of bibliographical data using co-citation network analysis and keyword co-occurrence analysis assisted in understanding the groups (communities) of research themes. We employed k-means clustering and factor analysis methods to further develop these insights. A historiographical direct citation analysis also unveils potential research directions. We observe that RFID applications in the supply chain are likely to benefit from the Internet of Things and blockchain Technology along with the other machine learning and visualization approaches. Originality/value: Although several researchers have researched RFID literature in relation to supply chains, these reviews are often conducted in the traditional manner where the author(s) select paper based on their area of expertise, interest and experience. Limitation of such reviews includes authors’ selection bias of studies to be included and limited or no use of advanced BA tools for analysis. This study fills this research gap by conducting an SLR of RFID in supply chains to identify important research trends in this field through the use of advanced BA tools.