During my technology consulting career over a period of 20 years, I can say, I have been part of a few crazy projects. One of the project was this WMS deployment we did for this hardware distributor. If you look at what was happening globally at that time, it was early 2001, in the US we were coming out of the dot com bust, the interest rates had been lowered so much to get the…
(Image Courtesy: Honeywell) For some supply chain and logistics functions, rugged wearable computers can be a real boon. At the same time, the cost of managing these devices can be daunting. Too often, rugged wearable computers cost 5x to 10x the cost of consumer electronic devices with one-third features. Are you looking to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) on these rugged devices? If yes, you are not alone. What is a rugged wearable…
I was talking to a distribution center manager recently and he shared a recent story of a strange and unique event in his 25-year career. He got a call from the mother of one of his temp hires questioning why the temp hire’s performance feedback was “not outstanding, instead it was just very good.” He had hired this kid recently for a team lead position As a worker, he was good, picked up the systems…
When I first saw Google glass, it took me back to 1995 and the release of the action film Terminator 2 – Judgment Day. A bunch of us sophomores got all excited about the movie and went to see it as a big group with much anticipation. The scene that got deeply engrained in my mind was the Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger entering the bar scene, starts scanning the objects around him to find an outfit that…
One of my customers, a bulk picking department manager, asked an intriguing question the other day: How can I keep my employees motivated and working hard? His organization had deployed our wearable devices a year or so ago, and I had called on him to check in and see how they were being used and how much savings they had achieved. He’d had much success, and we had helped this customer come a long way…
Recently, I was telling a colleague about how we helped a retailer with a week-long pilot project with our distribution center technology. The results were exciting. Day one, productivity shot up 8%, which translated into labor savings that any operations executive would love. It shone a light, though, on a very real tussle that occurs in many organizations: the distribution center executive loved the productivity gain and the new technology, but the IT team didn’t…
I learned a few things when I spent one winter in a distribution center in Canada. I learned what it was like to arrive for work in the dark and leave in the dark. I learned about the extra connector in Canadian cars that would allow the car to be plugged in to heat the engine block so the car would still start in sub-zero weather. I learned about how these winter warriors would get…
Today, IT technology may be one of the biggest enablers of supply chain efficiency. Organizations, then, are aware that finding or creating the right capabilities is central to business success. When enterprises buy complicated IT infrastructure, whether it is hardware, software, systems or anything else associated with such infrastructure, they are faced with a major decision: whether to buy this thing from a vendor or build it themselves. It is important to make the correct…
Photo courtesy: Port of Atlanta Recently, I was invited to take a place on a Tech for Distribution Center (DC) panel during the annual Georgia Logistics Summit. We tackled some intriguing questions: During this time of technological change, what does the future work force look like? What is the most important quality to look for when hiring? Who will be best suited to carry the organization into the new smart machine age? The Center for Logistics…
Photo courtesy: Samsung Google announced its Pixel phone bragging that it could last up to seven hours after a 15-minute charge. How cool is that? You don’t need to go through a miserable day if (or maybe more truthfully when) you forget to charge your phone the night before. I know from experience. When I had an iPhone 5, it would be a hard day if I missed charging before I went to sleep. Then, I got…
1. Increases EPP, using budgeted line items.
Millennial friendly technology, less onboarding time, very easy adoption – touch screen keypad, and 43% of Millennials already use IOS, familiar with Facetime, 85% of Millennials aged 18-24 own devices and 86% aged 25-34 own them, consume a lot of video on their smartphones, and are highly comfortable with this medium, they understand and like apps.