Towards Real-Time Inventory Visibility: An RFID–IoT Conceptual Design for SMEs

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) often rely on manual inventory management, resulting in data inaccuracies, delayed decisions, and stock imbalance. This study proposes a conceptual design of an IoT-based smart inventory system using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tailored for SME operations. The proposed system integrates RFID for automatic item identification, a microcontroller for local data processing, and cloud computing for real-time inventory synchronization and monitoring via a dashboard. Using a conceptual system design approach, the results indicate that the proposed architecture is theoretically valid, simple, and feasible, with the potential to improve inventory accuracy and operational efficiency in SMEs.