Press Report
Modern IT solutions and utilization of RFID technology form the basis for a high efficient supply chain management and revolutionize the worldwide flow of commodity
(visavis Economy 06.2006) The small and marvellous RFID chip even has made it to the world championship stadiums: the chip is placed on the FIFA-WM-tickets to ensure higher transport security. The consumer notes these far-reaching changes within the logistics sector only by and by: Radio Frequency Identification enables a much better control over data and goods flows than the use of barcodes and it also supports a highly efficient supply chain management. While the information which the barcode contains is static RFID makes it possible to supplement and update information permanently.
Modern IT-solutions and the use of RFID-technology form the basis for a highly efficient supply chain management. Only after the cross-company linking of the important partners in the supply chain and the harmonisation of all IT-systems which are used within the supply chain has succeeded it will be possible to make use of the still dormant potential. Oswald Werle, CEO of the Austrian inet-logistics GmbH firmly believes that "many significant optimisation potentials in cross-company logistics processes are still untapped. The next efficiency wave of the IT will start off exactly here." inet-logistics has developed an Internet-based standard software solution for the Supply Chain Execution (SCE) and progress even goes further: at the moment tags are tested which can store at least 256 bits and on which the user can also save data. Apart from that there are "Smart Objects" which are autonomous carriers of artificial intelligence and which can communicate with each other without the roundabout way of a base station or a scanner.
With these smart objects the next technological milestone is imminent. These ad-hoc-networks already now possess a high communication security; they achieve a reading rate of nearly 100 per cent and they prove that the logistics sector will still be one of the innovation motors for a long time to come.