On July 23, 2021, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, one year late, finally ushered in the grand opening ceremony. In the context of the new crown epidemic, the International Olympic Committee has expanded the familiar Olympic motto to "higher, faster, stronger-more united", and the implication is self-evident.

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In the Olympic arena, athletes constantly challenge the limits of physical function and create new Olympic records one after another, demonstrating the exciting spirit of transcendence, which infects every audience and netizen. At the same time, when we turn our attention to the industry, this transcending spirit also exerts its infectious power.

With the continuous improvement of the level of information technology, the entire society is in a more efficient state of operation, and in major industries and business circles, more efficient production methods are also used to subvert the traditional methods. As the degree of informatization of society continues to deepen, the power of technology continues to promote social innovation, whether it is the production chain or daily life, its rhythm is constantly increasing.

These technologies are undoubtedly rapidly reshaping all aspects of society. Many technologies represented by RFID, sensors, and AI are entering the production and application links in turn. They will change the existing workflow, logistics and transportation, and even change the user's terminal consumption experience.

The rapid development of e-commerce accelerates the pace of industrial innovation

In the past decade or so, industries such as 3C and clothing, which are closely related to the daily lives of residents, have been highly e-commerce. Compared with traditional retail operations, e-commerce is obviously more convenient and transparent, and it is not restricted by region and time. This is the reason why it can change traditional consumption patterns so quickly.

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Objectively speaking, the success of e-commerce is by no means an overnight success. There are many supporting points behind its rapid rise, including the ultra-high penetration rate of the Internet, the full popularity of online payments, the increase in residents’ acceptance of online shopping, logistics network coverage and delivery services. The perfection and so on, among them, each support point has a long-term development context.

According to data released by the United Nations, global e-commerce sales reached 26.7 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, accounting for 19% of global retail sales, and it is still in a trend of rapid development. Take Indonesia as an example. In 2016, the penetration rate of Indonesian e-commerce in the retail industry was only about 2%. By 2020, only 4 years later, this number has increased to 20%.

It can be seen that from the perspective of the global market, there is still huge room for growth in e-commerce.

In general, e-commerce has changed the original production relations. It has not only changed the commercial trade relations, but also greatly changed the past consumption patterns of residents.

Supply chain and logistics are hard work

E-commerce has promoted the innovation of the industrial chain, the most critical part of which is the digitalization of the industry. In just over a decade, many e-commerce platforms have emerged in China, including JD.com, Alibaba, and Pinduoduo. These giants have achieved platform-based operations, and the competition among giants is all-round.

In 2020, when JD.com described its own core competitiveness in the prospectus for its second listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, it listed three items, one of which is efficient and reliable logistics services.

In fact, JD.com realized the importance of logistics distribution early in its development, so it insisted on building its own logistics industry chain. With the help of digital and intelligent technologies such as RFID, AI, and robotics, JD is able to do everything from transportation to warehousing to every end-to-end logistics node.

In daily life, we tend to pay more attention to the Internet "front" of e-commerce giants, but their core competitiveness is more difficult to detect, because most of them are hidden in the supply chain and logistics system that consumers can't see.

Therefore, e-commerce giants have never stopped their hard work to consolidate the sound development of enterprises. For example, JD.com established a logistics group in 2017 and put forward the slogan of "becoming the world's most trusted supply chain infrastructure service provider". In 2013, Alibaba teamed up with SF Express and "Three Links and One Access" to establish a Cainiao network to vigorously promote innovative exploration in the supply chain and logistics fields. Pinduoduo, through its cooperation with Gome, uses Anxun Logistics under Gome to make up for its shortcomings.

Although it is difficult for consumers to perceive these changes in the supply chain and logistics fields, they have a personal experience in the consumer terminal. In recent years, more and more consumers have experienced the convenience of logistics services. For example, orders placed the night before will be delivered the next day, and logistics services can even achieve orders placed on the same day and delivered on the same day.

The global retail giant Wal-Mart is known by professionals as a "logistics enterprise disguised as a retail enterprise". Once Wal-Mart's efficient supply chain and logistics system is mentioned, its application of RFID technology cannot be avoided. Through the automatic data collection capabilities of the RFID system, Wal-Mart makes the goods in the links of inventory, distribution, outbound, and inventory management more efficient to transport, and makes the RFID system capable of data visualization.

Since 2020, under the impact of the epidemic, the non-contact advantage of RFID has become more prominent. According to a report released by IHL Group in 2020, the North American retail industry RFID adoption rate has reached 93%, and retailers said they use RFID at all stages of deployment. Therefore, changes in the market environment accelerate the deployment of RFID technology in all walks of life.

However, for companies to carry out digital transformation, they often need to go through an iterative process of upgrading from point to line to surface. From the beginning of RFID data collection, to the digitization of the work process, and finally to the digital transformation of the business side, the enterprise can be considered to have completed the true digital transformation.

At present, RFID has quite good adaptability in the industrial chain and supply chain, and can become a tool partner for collecting data in various scenarios and links, and is accelerating the pace of industrial digitization, making the world faster.