Archive for Logistics Technologies
Before you implement a supply chain planning or execution solution, you should talk to other companies that have implemented the solution (ideally, about 20 companies), as well as consultants and analysts familiar with the technology. If you are a busy executive and don’t have the time to conduct these interviews, someone on your staff can execute this research or you can hire an outside firm like ARC to do it… Continue reading
Visualizing Next Generation Routing
· CommentsThe New England Roundtable of CSCMP recently organized a tour of Walgreens’ Northeast Distribution Center (DC). What an amazing facility! Because I live in a Boston suburb and the DC is in Connecticut, I used MapQuest to get turn-by-turn directions and it told me that the trip would take just under 2 hours.
I made it to the tour on time, but it involved significant speeding and stress… Continue reading
Voice Recognition Basics
· CommentsJoe Pajer, COO of Vocollect, and Tom Murray, Vice President of Product Management, recently briefed me on their idea that logistics is entering the “voice-enabled warehouse era.” According to a study they commissioned, voice solutions have only penetrated about 10-15 percent of the warehouses it is well suited for, a percentage that I can’t verify but find very plausible. In light of the low penetration, I realized that providing… Continue reading
I just returned from The Logistics & Supply Chain Forum where I gave a workshop on “Mobile Technologies in Supply Chain.” The sessions went very well and I will write more about this topic down the road. But today let me share with you the key takeaways that I presented to the attendees:
Last summer, I wrote a posting highlighting the “white spaces” of transportation management—i.e., existing opportunities for companies and software vendors to innovate the way transportation is planned and executed. In many cases, these opportunities are not new, but either the technology hasn’t existed to enable them very well or companies have simply chosen to focus on other priorities.
One positive effect of the recession is that it has… Continue reading
More flexible forms of warehouse automation are emerging. One example of this is real-time location forklift automation—i.e., forklifts equipped with a real-time location system that allows drivers to proceed to a specified location and pick up (or put down) a load without the need for the driver to scan the location to prove that they have picked up (or delivered) the right load. This solution is designed for full pallet… Continue reading
The folks at Tecsys, a supply chain execution software vendor, sent me a whitepaper called Visual Logistics. The concept is simple: information displayed to warehouse workers on RF terminals should be more visual. Here is how picking information is typically displayed on a text-based RF terminal:
Traditional Text-Based RF Display (Source: Tecsys; click to enlarge)
Software-as-a-(Self)-Service
· CommentsOur personal lives are increasingly becoming self-service. When was the last time you called or visited a travel agent to book a flight versus self-booking on Orbitz, Expedia, or an airline’s website? When you get to the airport, do you stand in line to check in at the counter or do you use the self-service kiosk? Do you bank online and use ATMs or do you stand in line at… Continue reading
