Visibility specialist touts solutions to take advantage of data deluge resulting from radio frequency identification projects
Atlanta — May 26, 2004 — Supply chain visibility specialist Viewlocity has announced a program to help companies leverage radio frequency identification (RFID) projects to better manage supply chain operations and realize a return on investments currently being made in RFID hardware.
In Viewlocity's view, as companies work to comply with mandates from customers like Wal-Mart and the U.S. Department of Defense, projects are being justified out of fear of losing a key customer, not by more traditional financial measures. When the dust settles, asserts Viewlocity, these companies will be looking for ways to leverage their RFID infrastructure as a new source of data and will be asked to find ways to make these investments payoff.
The solution provider says that its products are already in use at various companies capturing data from a variety of sources, filtering it and alerting specific users to events that are meaningful to them. These alerts, commonly regarding problems or unplanned occurrences in a supply chain, include contextual information such as which orders are impacted and actions that can be taken to fix problems.
With RFID-enabled supply chains, the granularity and frequency of tracking can increase dramatically, resulting in visibility and event management capabilities extending down to the serial number level, according to Viewlocity.
The provider is offering companies with investments in RFID infrastructure a specially packaged solution designed to leverage data collected by RFID systems to improve operations and overall business performance. Scenarios may be as simple as alerting a manufacturing manager that a critical shipment of parts has arrived at his loading dock or as complex as advising a supply chain manager of several different options for adjusting operations when actual product demand is deviating from the forecast.
