The market of Automatic Identification Technologies: Accelerating at the Speed of Light!

摘要

Barcodes, data matrix, touch buttons, laser cards, and compact disks (CDs); active and passive radio frequency identification (RFID); real-time location systems; satellite terminals, geostationary earth orbiters (GEO), and low-earth orbiters (LEO); enterprise resource planning (ERP); and electronic data interchange (EDI) and extensible markup language (XML). These terms translate into a lot of technology evolving, and information aggregating, all at once. It gets even more complex when this technology and information integrates to support the Department of Defense's logistics operation, the world's largest supply chain. The speed at which these technologies advance is overwhelming, at times too much with which to keep up. Yet the changes brought about so far through these advances are actually improving processes. The implementation of current information technology improves inventory management and distribution services by increasing asset visibility. Beyond tracking assets more precisely in the supply chain, the major benefit these technologies bring lies within their power to capture data. Logistics professionals must learn how to leverage the power of this data by processing it and distilling it into manageable parts. Once this is done efficiently, the intelligence gained will have far-reaching, potentially revolutionary effects on supply chain management.