So, what does the title
mean? Read on to understand:
As kids, most of us wanted to be pilots flying those
supersonic planes and air force jets in high speed and look through the
fantastic view through the cockpit. But had we ever really seen the importance
of the real time communication between the command center and the pilot? Had we
thought of what would happen if we did not get the instantaneous information
about a malignant object that could strike us in seconds? Not really! We often
ignore the importance of being connected! This aspect has been improved upon
using latest technology in recent times with the help of augmented reality. This cutting edge technology has been emerging
fast and has found its application in various segments of business and consumers.
Google glass has been a pioneer product in this area so far and lot of new
companies are coming up with wearables.
What on earth is
google glass? And where can I see it?
Google/Smart glass is a groundbreaking device that uses this
technology which has been proven very valuable in various important domains including
healthcare. Next time you walk into a hospital, you can see a nurse wearing smart
glasses to check the route plan which is directly displayed and setting off her
medication tray. Then she goes into the patient’s room and scans the barcode on
his wristband using her glasses and receives information about what medication
that particular patient is supposed to take at that moment. She can clarify any
questions regarding the medication, dressing or the patient’s condition with a
physician immediately through her glasses. At the end of day, all this
information is fed into the patient’s electronic health record and the hospital
IT system is updated with latest information of the warehouse of medicines, inpatient
and outpatient records and the number of available beds etc.
Where else can this be
used?
This technology of smart glass has been successfully
implemented in one of the company warehouses in Austria. Knapp AG is a material
handling and logistics software solution provider in Austria who developed
augmented reality glasses using KiSoft Vision solution which is analogous to
voice recognition but here, the prompts are visual as opposed to audio. These
glasses are used in their warehouse to pick up products, sort them and
replenish in a faster and easier way. Wearable glasses are better than the voice
solutions because pallet building optimization works better with it. Pallet
building optimization is based on showing the worker how to stack the cases on
a pallet to maximize cube and ensure light items are safe and meeting case
grouping objectives. Especially it is useful where the items require a lot of
scans and too many serial codes are involved. This video shows how the smart
glass has improved warehouse management at Knapp AG.
So what? How is this
useful for supply chain management?
There’s work being done in this technology so that apps can
be developed which can be connected with the smart glass and a layer can be
developed in the realm of supply chain by integrating live data, social media
about real objects, places, cartons, pallets, trucks and staff to spare parts,
warehouse, deliveries and ultimately, the consumers. With these apps, it will
be easier to collaborate with anyone and everyone in the entire supply chain and
make decisions in real-time. Gone are the days when we could know when and
where the item is out of stock; now it’s time to know why an item is out of stock! The main issue with supply chain
management is that almost 80% of the data relating to the supply chain is
external to each entity. It’s with different companies, on different systems
and different formats. This makes the supply chain a group of individual silos making
it hard for us to integrate. Google glass/ augmented reality solves this
problem by making the supply chain a seamless flow of vital information in real
time.
Can you give a real
world example? Again, how does this work?
Imagine yourself as one of the logistics planning manager in
an enterprise: You are waiting for a truck which is running an hour late already
and the manufacturing department manager is expecting the material from you
right now! On the other hand, the customer wants his order delivered tomorrow!
On top of all this, you have an important meeting which will run for another
hour,that you can’t miss. You do not have any further information on any of the
problems and how to solve them. Now imagine, you walk into the meeting room and
wear you smart glasses and you can see the picture of the truck and you have
the current expected arrival time based on the real-time traffic density and
through your glasses you can update this information on the other IT systems
such as the manufacturing department and the CRM etc. so that necessary
arrangements can be made. Isn’t your life beautiful now?
Versatility: There’s
work being done on building an enterprise app-store which can be used similar
to an Apple or Android app store with wide range of business applications that
can be used on the versatile Google glass platform. This could be a huge
opportunity for both established software supply chain vendors and emerging software
companies. These apps are created by various vendors such as enterprise
software vendors, niche players with expertise in specific planning or
scheduling software, middleware vendors and most importantly the cloud vendors!
With the help of these apps and the Google glass platform, valuable data
sources over the extended supply chain and external data sources such as
weather, traffic, DHL etc which will enrich existing data the business
operation on a global level can be carried out with mind boggling accuracy.
Costs can be reduced, go-to-market can be accelerated and ultimately, quality
and customer loyalty can be improved drastically by using the appropriate tools
that this era of commercial revolution has to offer us!
Do you think augmented reality can help improve the global
supply chain? I would love to hear your thoughts!! J
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