Business’ and Data – 3b

When businesses look into data, they can focus on two forms of analytics, descriptive and predictive. Descriptive analytics is focused on data from the past and present to understand why a certain event took place, while predictive analytics is predicting what may happen in the future and understanding why. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the process of how companies handle and track their goods and services that transform into raw materials into the final product. Supply Chain Management is fragile because it makes it hard to balance efficiency and inventory accurately as well as how cost distribution is handled. RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, is wireless tech that enables identification of objects that have been fitted with radio frequency tags. It is beneficial as it helps both inventory and access control and it works when an antenna reads the electromagnetic energy. RFID can also penetrate non-metallic solid objects. RFID tags can even contain more information than barcodes and scanning can be done from a great distance. There are two different tags that can be used, passive, which are inexpensive and can only range a few feet, or active, which are more expensive but have a longer range. Some examples of RFID prevalent in society today include credit cards that can be “tapped” to pay, the Disney MagicBand, and hotel keycards. RFID helps supply chain management as it can provide useful information on numerous goods. RFID can provide information on which goods are needed and what goods are demanded more than others.