Radio Frequency Identification - Assignment Example

? Final Exam Harley-Davidson Radio Frequency Identification or other wise known and abbreviated as RFID, is a generic term that is used to describe a system that transmits the identity of an object or person, in the form of a unique serial number, that is exclusive to the item or person in question, wirelessly through radio waves. It falls under the category of Automated Identification Technologies. RFID is widely used and almost is a part of every sort of identification. Unlike the typical UPC bar code technology, it is not necessary to be in the physical proximity or line of communication to convey the data to the source. If Harley-Davidson is to install the RFID technology in its operations it will provide it with a lot of advantages (aimglobal.org). The operations of the company are conducted through more than one location. As the physical proximity is not essential to the transfer of data through radio frequency identification, it will become a lot easier for the management to keep track of all its assets at all the locations. By placing RFID tags on assets, asset management will become a lot easier. Through RFID, tracking assets that might have been stolen or lost, or are underutilized or are just forgotten will be very easy to locate. RFID can also facilitate a real time locating system for assets. As the company is in the manufacturing business, through RFID technology it will become possible for the company to not only to keep tabs on the finished products but on the work in progress as well. Through RFID, the company will be able to locate parts and work in progress, that way it will be possible for the company to reduce the defected materials and increase its out put. It will also be effective in managing all the models and versions of the finished products, despite of the differences in their specifications. As Harley-Davidson is more concerned about its supply chain management, RFID technology will help in the automation of the supply chain within the company. Through this technology the company will be able to track down shipments among various supply chain partners. This technology will be proven very successful especially in closed loop supply chains. It will also be an effective tool in the security measurements. With its help it can be easily monitored as to who accessed the business premises and when thus ensuring 24/7 security surveillance. Meaning that through this technology the advantages will not be limited only to the supply chain management but will be spread over other modules of the business too. With the extensive use of this technology, the implementation and use is becoming more and more cost beneficial and there are a lot more chances of further useful advancements in this technology. Besides the advantages it is also a fact that RFID technology is yet to be perfected. It is not easy to read the tags through liquids or metal, and as the main parts used in manufacturing are made up of metal it can be a problem to the company. The Suppliers will also have to equip their warehouses and transport vehicles with readers to monitor the tags from their side. This can lead to increased costs which might not be welcomed by all of the suppliers. 2. . With the implementation of the RFID technology in Wal-Mart and other leading retailers many new issues came to light. Privacy experts raised a lot of issues that sent the consumers thinking as to what their response should be towards this technology. According to one of the spokesmen from Wal-Mart, the electronic product codes or the EPC are just the next generation of barcodes and they will be readable within a few feet of a scanner. Issues were raised that the RFID scanners will be able to read any sort of ID cards that will be RFID equipped, for instance RFID-equipped driver’s license (Smith, Dailyfinance.com, 2010). Furthermore it was argued that the devices can be used by any one at these locations, not just the Wal-Mart employees thus endangering the privacy of the end-consumer even more. Several other retailers like J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale’s were also reported to be transitioning to the RFID technology (Wolverton, Thenewamerican.com, 2010). When Harley-Davidson will eventually be able to implement and start operating the technology, privacy issues will be raised by the suppliers and consumers. As far as keeping track of the inventory is concerned it won’t be an issue. But if the suppliers and consumers will realize the threat of security to their personal information they will raise concerns as to may be that information will be used in compromising fashion against them. This can severely affect the sales of the company if the trust element will be compromised. In order to mitigate that the company will have to make sure that the consumers and suppliers feel safe while dealing with them. 3. . The three main stages of the manufacturing of the motorcycles that can be the possible target points for the implementation of the technology are; the various parts as they are supplied by the suppliers, the work in progress in the form of subassemblies of the parts as they are during the process of manufacturing and the finished product. The most effective way of keeping tracks will be by designing tags in the form of major and minor tabs. Major tabs will be able to point at the finished product. They will represent the date the product was finally assembled, its main model and location where it was finally assembled. The minor tabs will represent the date of arrival of the parts, the respective supplier and the location where the parts were supplied along with the make and model of the part. Through this mechanism, the company will be able to keep tabs on the product when it will be in the form of parts and then afterwards when it will be completely assembled. By tagging the various parts that will be used in the manufacturing of the finished products, the company will be able to keep track of the movements of the parts. It will be able to monitor their usage and wastage if any occurs. Through these procedures the company will be able to avoid any sort of fraud and error while accounting for the various parts. And once they are properly and finally assembled, the company will tag them with tabs that represent the finished product. This way the company will be able to monitor the movements of its finished product and raw materials through out the process. Bibliography AIMGLOBAL.ORG, Technologies: RFID/What is RFID?[Online Resource], Available at: http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/RFID/what_is_rfid.asp, [Accessed Mar 2012] Smith, J. DAILYFINANCE.COM, 26 Jul 2010, Wal-Mart’s plan to use RFID tags sparks privacy concerns, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/26/wal-marts-plan-to-use-smart-rfid-tags-sparking-privacy-concerns/, [Accessed Mar 2012] Wolverton, J. THENEWAMERICAN.COM, 28 Jul 2010, Wal-Mart to embed RFID tags in clothing beginning August [Online Resource], available at: http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/4157-wal-mart-to-embed-rfid-tags-in-clothing-beginning-august-1, [Accessed Mar 2012] Product Promoted through Social Networking In the modern times, internet has played a major role in building up contacts all over the world. It is now very easy to stay in contact for two friends in the opposite corners of the world despite of the fact how much distance there is among them. Social networking has become a very famous method of staying in touch especially among teenagers and young adults. Books are being written that guides the general public as to how they can make the most of their social connections, and how they in turn can prove to be beneficial. Now a day, people use their social networks to not only keep their private lives interesting but to promote their businesses as well. Business deals are being made on the basis of their contacts and products are launched and promoted so that they can attract more and more customers. There are various types of products that can be widely promoted through social networking sites; the only trick is to determine the target market. As the social networking sites are not based on the physical limitations of actual locations so one just have to determine the product they want to launch and what should be the main target market for its promotion. Second most important thing is to determine if the operations of the business are strong enough to manage a global launch of the product, as a world wide launch will raise issues like transportation of the product to the destinations and measures that should be taken to ensure the safety of the product through transportation. So the main product that will be discussed in this paper is a Cafe, which will be focusing on the local target market in order to avoid complexities that will arise as a result of launch of a product in the global market. By targeting the local friends on the social network, one can rely on the word of the mouth for the promotion of his/her business. Initially, for the introductory launch of the cafe in the market, one can organize an event and send invitations on the social networking sites. The invitations should be attractive, and they should be used to build excitement and mystery among the target market so that they could feel compelled to visit. Furthermore, the invitations should not be restricted to immediate friends; on the other hand forwarding the invitations further into the social network should be encouraged. Afterwards, regular events should be organized and promoted on the social networking sites to ensure that the excitement should stay fresh among the customers. A separate page should be dedicated to the cafe on the social networking site that will narrate the latest events that are being incurred at the cafe. Regular concerts should be arranged to keep the music fans busy. Other events concerning other interests of the target market should also be arranged. The data related to the most popular interests, most favorite cuisine along with other details among the consumer market can be obtained through the networking site. This will ensure maximum number of customers that will show interest in that event and in return in the cafe. The cafe can serve food that is most popular among the customers. Through a million other similar ways, the cafe and its reputation can widely be promoted through these social networking sites, as through these sites one can make the most of its relations and this will in turn lead to maximum return in favor of the stakeholders. Nissan Motor Co 1. . With the incorporation of the internet services, businesses all over the world started to secure domains on the internet as it was becoming the new hub for the business activities. With increased activity on the web portals, almost every organization on the planet earth was making it a priority to secure a web domain for its corporation in order to keep up with the new advancements in the technology world. Nissan Motor Co. of Japan was selling its cars globally, whereas Uzi Nissan was a proud owner of a computer company that provided computer hardware and other network supports. Uzi Nissan, even though not the owner of as successful a company as Nissan Motor Co., comprehended the significance of the changes and reserved a name for its domain as soon as he was made aware of it. The name registered by Nissan’s Computer Corp. was nissan.net. The main cause of concern for Nissan Motor Co. arose when the Nissan Motor Co.’s lawyer contacted Uzi Nissan regarding the acquisition of the domain name. The main causes for the company’s late concerns could be because the company finally realized the importance of securing the domain names that were unique to the company so that it could protect its reputation globally. The company as it may seem, did not want to be recognized as one that could not catch up to the advancements in the business world on time. Sharing a domain name with a computer company, which is not even as successful as Nissan Motor Corp. might raise confusion among the customers. The operations of Nissan Computer Corp. could have been mistaken as a subsidiary to the Nissan Motor Co.’s operations and it was possible that both the companies can be affected by each other’s performance and reputation in the business world. Because of this confusion there was a possibility that one company could suffer or benefit from the other company’s connections as well. 2. . Uzi Nissan, as far as his position and actions are concerned, was justified to his arguments. Still ethically he was legally bound to respond to the Nissan Motor Co.’s lawyer’s queries, when he contacted him initially in 1995, so that the matter could have been clarified before it was taken to courts. Lack of response on his behalf, led to the exaggeration of the matter, only if it could have been corresponded before being brought to court it is possible that a lot of precious time of the courts could have been saved. Furthermore, considering that the issue has been closed, only because the lawyer did not pursue the matter further was not justifiable. The lack of the response could have been a response to the silent treatment from Uzi Nissan’s side. In the court, during the hearings, the claim from Uzi Nissan of using his family name for the domain, which was a common name in Middle East, is not a justifiable argument. If the name would have been unique to the family, then its significance could have been understood. The refusal to sell the domain name to the company seemed like an attempt of benefiting from Nissan Motor Co.’s reputation, even if it was not made obvious. 3. . Nissan Motor Co.’s position in the whole argument was also some what unjustified. Initially the company failed to realize the importance of the advancements in the technological world. Its delay in grasping the importance of the significant events, led to the whole issue. Just because the company held a strong position in the business world, it was not justifiable in suing and laying claims on Uzi Nissan and his domain name. Once the lawyer was failed in receiving a response from Uzi Nissan, he was ethically bound to send reminders before the claim could have been raised in courts. The claim for $ 10 million was unjustified, because the lawyer failed to pursue the matter properly before bringing the matter to court, and once the courts had ruled justifiably, by banning the use of the domain names, the appeal to the Supreme courts just because the domain names were not transferred to Nissan Motor Co. was unethical and a prospective wastage of the court’s time. 4. . The court’s decision in the whole matter seemed justified. Nissan Motor Co. failed to keep up with the advancements in the technological and business world. The claim on the domain name only after they were able to realize their mistakes was not justifiable. Also, the step towards suing Nissan Computer Corp. in using the domain name was not justified as well. The company failed to follow up and pursuing the matter before coming to court. Once they were unable to receive a response from Nissan Computer Corp. they were supposed to send at least one reminder and one warning, that could have explained the importance of the issue and the expected consequences in case of the lack of a reasonable response form Nissan Computer Corp. The decision to restrict the use of both the domain names was also justified, that way the possibility of any confusion regarding the company names and its operations was mitigated and by prohibition from any sort of negative marketing against Nissan Motor Co. by Uzi Nissan or his company avoided the prospective issue of conflict among the two entities. Last but not the least, the ruling of not transferring the domains to Nissan Motor Co. was also justified. That way the courts emphasized the importance of realizing the advancements in the business world on time and it was a lesson to other companies so that they could keep up with the modern times so that such matters could be avoided in future. E4: Load Balancing Products Internet server programs supporting critical operations are working 24 hours seven days a week. These server programs support applications regarding financial transactions, database access and corporate intranets. Any delay in their performance can cause millions of losses to the organizations, thus they require ability to manage the large volumes of data in an efficient manner so that any unwanted delays can be avoided. For these reasons organizations rely on clustering, which enables the independent servers to work as one; in order to ensure higher availability, easier manageability, and greater scalability. Network load balancers serve the purpose of balancing incoming IP traffic, among multi node clusters. They provide scalability and high availability to enterprise wide TCP/IP Services. Through their deployment, the web servers for applications like e-commerce can be efficiently managed (technet.microsoft.com). There are many products available in the market that fulfills the purpose. Some of them are discussed as under: Kemp technologies pride themselves in providing intelligent, high performance yet affordable Application Delivery Controllers and Server Load Balancing Appliances for the last 10 years. Among their many products is one LoadMaster 2200 Server Load Balancer. It is an affordable, yet features rich, server load balancer with integrated SSL acceleration and layer 7 content switching. It optimizes the web infrastructure by providing top notch performance, flexible scalability and security for the applications and operations while streaming IT costs. It simplifies the management problems regarding network resources while ensuring optimal user access to various contents and servers. It provides access to up to 256 Virtual and 1000 real servers; it also provides 99.999% high availability of applications and guarantees that the requests will be directed to available servers only. With a regular server and application health checking feature it further more guarantees lowest possible power consumption while carrying out its procedures. It has a bootable DOM with 1 GB RAM. Its features are detailed over various areas that cover the standard requirements, performance norms, security, administration, health checking and availability of the servers and much more (Kemptechnologies.com). Kemp Technologies propose affordable prices for their products. Barracuda networks provide the powerful enterprise-class solution for the servers and associated applications through their Barracuda Load Balancer. This load balancer is designed to provide fast and comprehensive solutions and capabilities to any IP based applications including HTTP, SSH, RDP, DNS, LDAP, RADIUS and TFTP along with many other TCP/UDP based services. It has an intrusive prevention system which help secures the system even if a security patch has been overlooked for implementation or even if there are any present threats to the existing security. It has three different operating modes to ensure the utmost level of flexibility as compared to any other load balancer available on the market. It provides high availability to the enterprise’s server farm by synchronizing the configurations between secondary and primary load mangers. It can route the traffic to a number of different servers depending upon the nature of the incoming content. It supports multiple scheduling technologies, and can reduce traffic requirements by automatically applying GZIP Compressions to render able HTML contents, the different models provided by the company are Model 240, 340, 440 and 640; 640 being the latest, and their prices range from $ 2,099 to $12,599 respectively (Baraccudanetworks.com). One such other product is the Radware’s Link Proof OnDemand Switch, which is now available in various models designed according to the needs of a range of larger and small enterprises. Their products have the incorporated features that support data centre availability, multiple WAN Link Application Deliveries, Multiple WAN Link performance acceleration, gateways and tunneling between headquarters to branch offices. The device has the capability to identify failures at any point along with the application or WAN and then to react proactively. Provides real time traffic redirection, smart application routing and Link load balancing also it accelerates content delivery and maximizes WAN Link band width usage among many other features (Radware.com). The main purpose of all these products is to increase the performance of the servers through various technical processes so that they could be utilized in the effective performance of the operations of an organization. Bibliography TECHNET.MICROSOFT.COM, Network load balancing technical Overview, [Online Resource], Available at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742455.aspx, [Accessed Mar 2012] KEMPTECHNOLOGIES.COM, Features, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.kemptechnologies.com/ar/server-load-balancing-appliances/loadmaster-2200/overview-0.html, [Accessed Mar 2012] KEMPTECHNOLOGIES.COM, Features details, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.kemptechnologies.com/ar/server-load-balancing-appliances/loadmaster-2200/feature-details.html, [Accessed Mar 2012] BARRACUDANETWORKS.COM, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/balancer_features.php, [Accessed Mar 2012] RADWARE.COM, Models, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.radware.com/Products/ApplicationDelivery/Linkproof/Default_TechSpec.aspx, [Accessed Mar 2012] RADWARE.COM, Overview, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.radware.com/Products/ApplicationDelivery/Linkproof/default.aspx, [Accessed Mar 2012] RADWARE.COM, Key features and benefits, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.radware.com/Products/ApplicationDelivery/Linkproof/Default_FeatureBenefit.aspx, [Accessed Mar 2012] Web Services for State Government Web Services are basically an Internet Application Programming Interfaces (ADI) that can be accessed through either internet or intranet, meaning that it can run on any browser without any hassle with out any need of any sort of changes to be made. Web services provide a variety of benefits regarding businesses and technological innovations, among them a few includes; application and data integration, versatility, code re-use and cost savings. Through application and data integration it will be very easy for one application to communicate and share data with any other application that has been integrated on the internet or intranet of the corporation. Web services are versatile in design, meaning that they have been designed in a manner that it can be accessed easily directly by either humans or through other applications or other web services. A client can even combine data from different web sources and use it to create integrated reports for business usage. Different clients have different requirements from the system, instead of creating custom interfaces for every client, it is possible to create one module and assign its different sections to different clients depending on their needs. All these advantages contribute to large amounts of cost savings once the initial cost of implementation is over. These cost savings lead to future profit contributions once the system is up and running (Altova.com). There are four main state departments that are being considered that can incorporate the web services in their operations. These departments include the Attorney General’s Department of Corporation Records, the Tax Administration and Collection Department, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of fish and Wildlife Management. All these departments are already accessible to outside parties through websites; information can be easily entered and updated through them, so the main value addition that web services will provide will be the integration among these apartments. The Attorney General’s department maintains all kinds of records for all the organizations that are incorporated in the country. Through web services it can communicate with sources outside the office for a better integration of the data. The Tax Administration and Collection Department monitors the tax liabilities that are due to individuals and companies and its collection. Through web services the Attorney General Department and the Tax Department can be integrated in a manner that the Attorney General Department can extract relevant information regarding companies from the Tax Department without any hassle. The Department of Motor Vehicles monitors the sale, purchase, registration and licenses of motor vehicles. With the integration of this site with the Attorney General Department and Tax Department, the Attorney General Department can access the transport information of the main employees of the corporations, the Tax Department can assess how much tax is due on the assets of each individual or corporation and then in turn can properly calculate the tax liabilities and monitor their collection. The Department of Fish and Wildlife management monitors and grants licenses regarding hunting and other activities like mining and fishing among others. If the data of this site will be integrated with other departments it can contribute to non-financial profile of all the individuals and corporations that participate in mining operations or hunting activities. All the information in these records can obviously be not accessible to all the employees for the sake of confidentiality. Through web services and its designs, the information can be made restricted to some employees while it stays accessible to higher officials. Eventually, such integrated operations will help in the collection of information through proper and easier resources. It will decrease the hassle of increased documentation among departments and lead to a much integrated system, which through communication on an application to application basis will provide more and easily accessible information. Timely available information will decrease the wastage of time and the operations will be performed on a timely basis. This will eventually lead to cost savings and higher state profits. Bibliography ALTOVA.COM, White Paper- Web Services: Benefits, Challenges and a Unique Visual Development Solution, [Online Resource], Available at: http://www.altova.com/whitepapers/webservices.pdf, [Accessed Mar 2012] Read More