M2M Technology Allows Remote Management in Supply Chain
The report Top Ten Supply
Chain Technology Trends, produced by
Intermec Technologies, offers us interesting insights and comprehensive case
studies regarding to the latest technology developments and trends in supply
chain. The top ten supply chain technology includes comprehensive connectivity,
voice and GPS communication integrated into rugged Computers, speech
recognition, digital imaging, portable printing, RFID, RTLS…etc. While they may
sounds familiar or even ordinary to you, the applications of these technologies
are in fact bringing substantial improvements to the current supply chain
systems. Some modifications on the
common technologies with a creative mind have benefited the supply chain and
its customers, as well as increased efficiency and achieved cost-savings in
supply chain systems.
One of the new trends in supply chain is the concept of
remote management, which means the manager is able to access to up-to-date
information of its supply chain and monitor the performance from a far off
place in the real-time situation. Machine-to-Machine (also abbreviated as M2M)
is a popular and widely used technology in today’s supply chain. M2M allows
remote machines and sensors collecting and sending data to a central point for
analysis, either by humans or computers so that there is less human
intervention and therefore less costly. The difference between traditional
communication technology and M2M is that M2M uses existing networks, such as internet,
sensors and personalize computers, which gives us more accurate and real-time data.
You may wonder how M2M works. M2M is a mixture of three
technologies – wireless sensors, internet, and personal computers. For example,
an environmental engineer needs to monitor the quality of water to make sure the
environmental engineers. He may find that Data from the treatment plant will
give information about the water's condition as it enters the process. For instance,
the engineer places sensors around/near place that are sensitive to contaminates
in the raw waters. Those sensors can tell a lot of information to engineers,
such as oil appearing in the water. The engineer is able to monitor and analyze
the problem and respond to it immediately.
M2M significantly improves the accuracy of data collections
and communications between machines. One
unique M2M adaptation in supply chain is that its ability to configure, monitor
and troubleshoot bar code readers and printers, RFID equipment, ruggedized
computers and other industrial data collection and communication equipment. M2M
is able to achieve this by monitoring the configurations and software updates
of the machines to ensure its technology consistency, accessibility and
compatibility to a wide range of machine which M2M can easily “talk” to, and
optimizing RFID readers for their immediate environment by changing power
output and making other tuning adjustments. M2M is able to “talk” to a variety
of devices and machines, allowing more effective and efficient communications
between machines and providing advantages such as a real-time environment for
the supply chain manager.
Enhancing technology communication benefits many parts in
the supply chain system, such as logistics and warehouses. For instance, the manager and the truck driver
can exchange information regarding the status of the orders, road conditions
and time management through M2M technology. With a higher visibility of
information and timely supports from the manager, the truck driver is able to
achieve quicker delivery and higher efficiency. The adaptation of M2M
doubtlessly has made supply chain system more integrated and more flexible to
respond to changes in reality, as well as able to meet the changing attitudes
of the customers about their needs. A question that we can think about is how
to incorporate customers into the M2M network where customer can also exchange
information freely with the supply chain.
Top Ten Supply Chain Technology trends http://www.mirnah.com/images/White_Papers/Trends_SupplyChain/Top10Tech_wp.pdf
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