Using RFID, with no intervention from any human, a warehouse management system can be kept aware of exactly where inside a facility each pallet of goods under its control is located at any moment.
A refrigerated delivery truck can report not only how many cases of ice cream are on board but also the temperature of its cold compartment—and perhaps its location, highway speed, and even the amount of wear on each of its tires. A jet engine may collect data about its turbine's in-flight performance, by describing rotational speed, temperature, and vibrations. A vending machine at a remote highway stop can communicate to its owner, far away (perhaps by wireless network) that its inventory of Mars bars is getting low A "smart shelf" in a retail store can report each time a customer removes a product—or puts it back. And so forth. The wiring of the world with so many sensors, of so many types, all collecting and reporting data about themselves and about the goings-on in their vicinities, has profound implications for businesses and for the managers who run them. If nothing else, this wiring of the world demands new investment by companies in IT infrastructure, ranging from truckloads of RFID sensors to networks of RFID readers to wireless data networks and more. A whole new tier of software is required, too, to collect, filter, and distribute the massive volumes of sensor data that will start flowing into corporate data centers. New techniques and tools will be needed to analyze and make sense of these floods, too. RFID implementation is not solely a matter of shouldering new burdens, however. It opens the door to myriad new opportunities for innovation, both in how businesses operate and how they are managed. Many opportunities will arise to incrementally improve well-honed operations and also to rethink, from end to end, certain key business processes: Wherever there is a physical movement of objects—merchandise in a distribution center, products moving through an assembly line, delivery trucks on the streets and highways, or high-value diagnostic equipment in a hospital, for example—there's a good chance that RFID can help improve operations. And, for those with a particularly creative bent (and no small amount of good luck), RFID may serve as the basis for lucrative new lines of business, new business models, and entirely new companies. This set of technologies may not prove as fertile as those that ushered in the World Wide Web and attracted a torrent of investment by venture capitalists, but RFID is sure to stimulate a great deal of new thinking, innovation, and hard-dollar payback.
With RFID, Think Process and Not Just Technology
As always, the very real danger is that managers themselves will become seduced by the new technologies and then appreciate them only superficially and misunderstand their true purpose and potential.
How are Firewall Systems Incorporated in Remote Monitoring?
Firewall implementations are available today from a wide array of vendors. With the ever-increasing awareness of network security and the costs of lost information, many new firewall implementations continue to emerge.
What is ITSP Sourcing?
An entire library could be written on this topic. In the ITSM world, sourcing is considered part of the service design model and something every business customer plans well before the service requirements are finalized.
