Preparing Traditional Manufacturing SMEs for Global Competition with Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies

Traditional Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector are an important economic factor. Changes in global business are affecting those traditional manufacturing SMEs exceptionally. It is vital for them to be able to offer build-to-order products and to handle an extensive number of different goods with a reliable overview about demand and stock in production and storage, which is often not possible with the existing inventory management system. In this paper, the results of a research activity to determine requirements towards identification technology for supporting the reception of goods and warehousing of traditional manufacturing SMEs are described. The challenges of those SMEs in inventory management, verified by a case study, are discussed and formulated into demands of a suitable Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) system. The analysis of internal business processes provides another set of requirements towards the system. Thus the proposed solution satisfies the needs of a global market as well as the limited resources of a traditional SME.