Some day in the near future, all supply chains will need to be sustainable supply chains. Our current supply chains are depleting non-renewable resources and they are not optimized to sustain renewable resources. I just recently read the book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared M. Diamond. This book brought home to me the message that we cannot continue to indefinitely rely on non-renewable resources to sustain our supply chains and economies. We cannot continue to use supply chain sources and solutions that degrade and reduce the productivity of the environment. These type of supply chain practices will more and more result in supply chain and business collapses. There is a need for change that can only be brought on by innovation and the better use of technology to include information technology.
The Need to Transform Unsustainable Supply Chains. Jared M. Diamond’s book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, provides ample evidence that there is a close correlation between poorly managed economic growth and environmental degradation. There are countless examples going back thousands of years, where societies and economies have collapse because they depleted the natural resources that supported their economies. It is quite obvious that most of our supply chains today are unsustainable. Within our generation we must change our supply chain practices through innovation and technology or suffer the consequences of unsustainable economic growth.
Sustainability Development Defined. The United Nations defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This is the goal needed to transform unsustainable supply chains into sustainable supply chains. We need to find innovative business practices and technologies that enable supply chains to support the current needs of businesses without compromising the ability of supply chains to meet the needs of businesses and customers in the future. See Wikipedia for more on Sustainability.
Measuring Supply Chain Sustainability. If you cannot measure something, it is difficult to manage it. This is the same with supply chains. How can we measure the sustainability of a supply chain? At the macro level, supply chains can be measured by their environmental impact or ecological footprint. One way to measure environmental impact is by using the human impact I PAT formula. This formula measures Human Impact (I) on the environment. It consist of measuring population, affluence, and technology. In the case of supply chains, the human impact (I) in the I PAT formula is the supply chain impact on the environment. Using I PAT for measuring supply chain impacts consists of population numbers (P) the supply chain supports, level of consumption or affluence (A) for each person supported with a product or service, and the impact per unit of resource used which is dependent on the technology used (T). Thus, I = P X A X T.
I PAT Supply Chain Sustainability Example. A supply chain example using the I PAT formula would be as follows: a supply chain supports 10 million people a year with their paper needs (P), these people need X pounds of paper products a year (A), and the supply chain needs X acres of renewable timber lands for each pound of paper products (T). As you can see supply chain managers can best influence supply chain’s sustainability by how much they can reduce the T (the technology solution) that they apply to supporting the production and distribution of each paper product unit.
Competitive Advantage With a Green Supply Chain. Material Handling Industry of America’s article, The Green Supply Chain, provides convincing arguments that a sustainable supply chain can be a competitive advantage. Advantages include:
New Products. The article mentions GE’s “Ecomagination program where they are focused on growing their revenue stream from environmentally friendly products to the tune of 20 billion dollars by 2010.”
Meet Customer’s Evolving Requirements. Customers are more and more demanding environmental friendly products, and will increasingly prefer products that are supported by a sustainable supply chain.
Reduce Costs. The Green Supply Chain article goes on to say “Sustainability can be a competitive advantage for many companies. If you can develop a sustainable supply chain think of the money that can be saved by not having to dispose of harmful by-products, reducing obsolescence, decreasing the amount of money spent on scrap and the resources spent on adhering to regulatory issues.”
Compliance With Government Regulations. More and more governments are taking action to assure a sustainable economy now and in the future. This means businesses having to comply with regulation or be subject to fines or denied from doing business until they do comply with environmental regulations.
This challenge of protecting data online is really putting a muzzle on using the full potential of today’s information technology. If we can solve this issue of protecting people’s data rights, we could realize the full potential of information technology to maximize the real-time sharing of information. This would be information that is complete, accurate, and timely that supports technology initiatives such as augmented reality, real-time web, real-time sensor networks, and so on.
There is No 100% Data Protection Guarantee. joeandrieu.com blog posting, Beyond Data Ownership to Information Sharing, gets me thinking that maybe we should be taking a broader view of not just focusing on protecting personal data, but focus on restricting the wrongful use of data. Joe is right in that we should assume that data cannot be fully protected. There is always going to be a hacker or someone’s carelessness that will “spill the beans”. There is no guarantee that data or data “rights” can be protected.
Protecting Online Data Much Like We Protect Real-World Property. Many people do not understand the issue of online data protection, and there are a variety of opinions on how to protect data online. In many aspects, protecting data online is not that much different from protecting real-world property. For example, look at the measures we take to protect a laptop that an employee may use at work and at home. The employee has a responsibility of taking reasonable measures to protect the theft of the laptop. The employer also has policies in place to secure its property. The general community has a moral obligation to protect private property. The Government also has the responsibility to protect property and punish violators. This same holistic approach is needed for protecting data online. Individuals, communities, companies, and governments need to be involved in protecting data rights.
Data Protection Versus Protecting the Wrongful Use of Data. In many cases online data protection measures should follow how we protect real-world property, but there is a key difference with protecting online data. Online data can be copied and transferred anytime, anywhere. Because of this, it may be best to focus more on restricting the wrongful use of data versus putting all our focus on data ownership rights and how to protect data online. We need to define who owns data and take reasonable measure to protect it, but we also need to take a more holistic approach. This means focusing on restricting the wrongful use of data.
Preventing the Wrongful Use of Data and the Free Flow of Information. We all need to pitch in to prevent hackers, thieves, mob mentality, and careless people from wrongfully using online data. We should all be watchful to prevent the wrongful use of personal data. We should all encourage and foster ways for people to be compensated for producing valuable information and content. Wrongful use of data and content should be discouraged and even punished. If we only take a data protectionist approach, it offers no guarantee that data will be protected, and just as bad, protectionist policies discourage the free flow of data as well as limiting the full potential of information technology.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a technology used to identify stuff and track things that move. This can include anything from an ocean container to an individual product. RFID technology consists of a RFID tag and a RFID reader. The RFID tag is secured to the item that is being tracked, and RFID readers (fix-site or hand-helds) read and interact with RFID tags.
RFID Technology is More Than a Replacement for Bar Codes. RFID technology goes a lot further than just replacing bar codes. RFID technology as a minimum allows for fully automated, non-line-of-sight tracking. RFID tag technology can also have a full range of functions to support any type of tracking as well as being fully integrated with sensor technologies and computer applications. See, RFID Tracking Networks 101, for more on the full range of RFID applications.
RFID Tags. At the basic level, a RFID tag consists of an integrated circuit that stores and process information, and an RF antenna that receives and transmits signals with an RF interrogator. Depending on functionality, RFID tags can be as small as a bar code label or as big as a brick. Passive RFID tags have no battery with limited capabilities and transmission ranges from a couple of inches to a couple of feet. An active RFID tag has a battery with the capability of advance computing functions as well as a RF range of up to 1,000 feet.
RFID Interrogators. RFID interrogators (also called RFID readers) connect via wireless with RFID tags and in turn can interact real-time with various computer software programs to perform such functions as item and shipment visibility. RFID interrogators can come in many forms to include RFID reader tunnels to handheld devices to long-range interrogators that look like saucer-shaped hatboxes. RFID readers also have the capability to communicate in “real-time” with multiple RFID tags.
RFID Communications Protocols. When RFID first started (and continues today in many closed RFID networks) there were a lot of different communications protocols. Many of them only worked in certain environments or were proprietary in nature. Now RFID communications is being standardized with RFID standards such as DASH7 for active RFID tags and ISO 18000-6 for passive RFID tags.
RFID Data Standards RFID tags have data standards similar to bar codes, but more robust. A key RFID tag data standard is the Electronic Product Code (EPC). The EPC standard is a family of coding schemes that are similar to the standards used for bar codes, but are used for RFID tags. The EPC was created as a low-cost method of tracking goods using RFID technology. EPC tags are designed to identify each item manufactured, as opposed to just the manufacturer and class of products, as bar codes do today. Find out more about the EPC standards for RFID tags.
See Managing RFID Data for a detail technical design overview on RFID systems.
