Supply Chain Management

Overheard - Real-time location system (RTLS)

“A lot of healthcare equipment is starting to come with Wi-Fi radios already installed. If it’s not there, they add a Wi-Fi tag. It broadcasts and contacts the closest … access points.  Such tags retail for about $50 and can last for months, emitting ‘chirps’ to update any listening Wi-Fi access points about their current position and condition.” Stan Schatt, Wi-Fi-based real-time location systems primed to grow market share

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is real-time location system.

Bokode - replacing barcode and RFID?

MIT scientists have devised a new coding standard that can be read from digital cameras, and will be used in everything from augmented reality to motion capture. Rather than being a simple flat image, like a barcode or a QR code, Bokode uses a light beam, whose brightness and angle are encoded with information. The tag itself is tiny–about the size of the @ symbol in a keyboard. But it contains thousands of bits of data. Cliff Kuang, MIT’s Bokode: A Tiny Barcode Replacement That’s Chockablock With Data

Guess we need to add definitions for Bokode and QR code.

A QR code (quick response code) is a two-dimensional bar code. In Japan, QR codes have become more popular than barcodes. A typical barcode can hold a maximum of 20 digits.  A QR code can hold up to 7,089 characters. How? Well,  barcodes can only span horizontally.  QR codes can span horizontally and vertically.

Bokodes take the concept a step further.

According to Quinn Smithwick at MIT, the current version of bokode tech uses a 2D data matrix with Reed Solomon error correction and can hold megabits of information.  Bokodes are going to be perfect for augmented reality.

Imagine going to the opera and looking through your cell phone’s camera at a specific character on stage. Now imagine that character has a bokode beauty mark on her face and when you aim your camera at her face, you can not only find out who that character is, but you can read an entire snyopsis that tells you all about the character and how she fits into the plot. You can even get a bio of the person playing her.

Now imagine doing the same thing when you’re shopping. There might be a bokode on the store’s welcome sign, telling you what’s on sale.  There might be a bokode on the sales tag for the jacket you’re looking at, telling you through your camera’s viewfinder what the jacket is made of, where it was made, how much it costs and how to clean it.  In the shoe department, that bokode on the bottom of the shoe you want to try on will tell you if the store has it available in your size.

Will all that hoo-ha about RFID tags on consumer goods being too intrusive will fade away? From what I’m learning about bokodes, the answer just might be “yes.”

Overheard - Discrete manufacturing

“There are far too many valuable resources, too much valuable capital and especially too much human skill and know-how embedded in America’s manufacturing sector to allow it to go to waste.” Vice President Biden, speaking in Perrysburg, Ohio

Tuesday, June 23rd, Vice President Biden and the Middle Class Task Force went to Perrysburg, Ohio to promote manufacturing.  The Vice President hosted a discussion on the state of manufacturing.  From what I could gather reading through the local news feeds,”retooling” and “renewable energy” were the buzzwords-of-the-day.  If you’re a discrete manufacturer for automobile parts, for instance, you might want to picture yourself making parts for wind turbines or solar panels instead.

Overheard: Robots take over distribution centers at Walgreens and Staples

The scene is a constant swirl of activity, like a ballroom dance, with dozens of robots and pods in motion at any one time. APICS The Association for Operations Management, Dance of the Bots

Robots move completed orders to a staging area. When the truck is ready, all the pods that have completed orders for that destination get up and move to the loading dock.

Check out this video from AT&T TV. You’re watching Kiva Systems robots. The little orange roomba-like robots follow adhesive bar codes in a high density grid pattern on the floor. They communicate with a centralized server in a big game of “Mother May I?”