Category Archives: Technology

Don’t Fear New Technologies

This byline in a recent Industry Article on “five things you need to know about material handling” is an article in itself. It’s bad enough that most companies think they can’t afford new technologies and put upgrades off until they’re so far behind the curve that the upgrade is a multi-million dollar effort because everything has to be upgraded, and usually all at once, resulting in a big bang project that, more often than not, blows up in their face. It’s even worse when they fear new technologies. Good technology saves time, money, and enables the identification of opportunities that would never be noticed otherwise.

This isn’t to say that you should buy every module that a sales person will throw at you, but that you should look for the solutions most appropriate to your needs, buy them, implement them, and profit from them. Becuse, without the right technology, as the article points out:

    • you’ll never know you have too many lift trucks
      which results from not optimizing fleet management for maximum uptime and efficiency
    • you’ll never know that some trade-offs are only illusions
      and disappear when you use optimization to identify a third transportation option that saves time and money
    • you’ll never know that capital equipment can be more than capital equipment

and that it can be an ongoing expense as the initial cost of most equipment these days is only a fraction of the total lifetime cost when maintenance and operation is factored into account, and this is as true for computing technology as it is for lift trucks; an average PC costs much more to operate over its lifetime with today’s energy costs than it costs to buy it

So don’t fear new technology. However, remember that a commodity is a commodity and you’re not looking for a partner. I have to disagree with the author, who works for a vendor, on this point. Sometimes you just need a PC, or, in this case, a lift-truck.

Build a Better Beer Widget? Yes We Can!

A recent article over on CNet, which describes the beer widget as the hollow plastic ball that rattles around the can and is largely responsible for the foamy head on the just-poured brew, highlights how a university mathematician from Limerick, Ireland has discovered a way to create a more efficient, less expensive widget.

The research, which looked into the best way to harness the gas pockets trapped within cellulose fibres as (starting) points for bubbles to grow and release when a can of beer is cracked and poured, built a mathematical model that determined how much cellulose fibre would be needed to create enough bubbles for a head that could compete with a draught poured at a local pub. Precisely, 8.3 x 10-4 square meters of fibre are required, or, a credit-card sized piece of paper added to a can of Guinness, or a layer of paper-like fibres coated on the inside of a can. No widget needed. But the draught will have to be poured slowly as the bubbles are not produced in a quick jolt, as they are with the widget.

The One “Ring”

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

A recent ChainLink Research piece on “ERP Part One – The Tales of Technology”, while addressing fusing, the myth of integration, noted that the lack of cohesion in architecture and applications led to the beginning of a silent admission by ERP, that there ultimately would never be the ‘one corporate software system’, but they would be a provider of a suite of products. I can’t say I agree.

We are moving toward the one “system”, coming full circle from the introduction of the first MRP systems back in the 50’s, but the “system” will not be so much a single application from a single vendor by a “ring” of seamlessly integrated applications by one or more vendors that address all supply chain functions supported by one central “cloud” with built-in middleware that enables multiple providers to seamless integrate their applications with applications from their peers.

And the way things are going, Salesforce could be “the one system” for many businesses. With so many SRM providers building apps for the SalesForce AppExchange that seamlessly integrate with the core platform and CRM data, it’s a logical next step. Coupa, CVM Solutions, and SupplierSoft have apps on the platform and a dozen more companies are developing apps as we speak.

Cloud services like the AppExchange may soon build the “One Ring” that binds all the systems into one cloud system. What do you think?

If You Want To Know How Green a Data Centre Is, Ask For a Verified PUE

In a recent article, Global Services asked if “cloud computing [is] really green”. Considering that most of your supply chain apps are moving to the cloud, and that sustainability is a must, it’s a question you should be able to answer. Unfortunately, the article was completely useless and gave you no useful information whatsoever.

All it said was that

  • a recent study from Microsoft noted that, due to increased efficiency and scalability, outsourcing companies can reduce their energy use and carbon footprint by up to 90%,
  • an uninterrupted power supply is required to keep data warehouses running and cool, and
  • energy efficiency is not green on its own, and is no longer enough.

With respect to these statements

  • we all know scale adds efficiency, and that data centres will be much more energy efficient if they use modern high-density low-power blades while you use ancient box servers,
  • classic data centres will create sauna temperatures if not kept cool, and
  • the energy source needs to be renewable.

In order to determine how green a data centre is, you need to know at least the following three metrics:

  • The Performance Per Watt (PPW) of the hardware.
    This tells you how efficient the hardware is. Typically measured in MFLOPS (Mega Floating point Operations Per Second) or LINPACK FLOPS per watt, an efficient modern IBM BladeCenter can get up to 536 MFLOPS/watt. Compare this to a desktop Beowulf cluster that maxes out at 58 MFLOPS with 4 dual core Athlon 64’s.
  • The average load of each operating machine.
    If a machine is only operating at 20% load, on average, you’re only getting 20% of the PPW. But if the average load of each operating machine is 80%, you’re getting at least 80% of the PPW. A modern data centre uses dynamic process allocation and virtualization and machines sleep until the load on the machines that are awake exceeds about 90% in a sustained manner, at which point another machine is woken up and added to the available pool. A traditional data centre does not use virtualization or have machines that support fast wake-up or shut-down or dynamic load balancing software and the machines are always on.
  • The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
    PUE is a measure of how efficiently a data centre uses power and measures how much power is used by the computing equipment in contrast to the overhead required for lighting, cooling, etc. Defined as Total_Facility_Power / IT_Equipment_Power, an ideal data centre has a PUE of 1.0. While not achievable, a PUE of 1.1 is, even though the average data centre still has a PUE of 2.0 to 2.5. Today, a data centre is generally considered green if it has a PUE of < 1.5, but the best data centre in Europe, datadock, has a PUE of only 1.21 and the Thor Datacenter in Iceland has a PUE of only 1.07 and a zero carbon footprint. With carbon emission mandates coming into effect around the globe and significant mandates for power reduction by 2020, if the data centre isn’t closing on a PUE of 1.2, it’s not efficient. And unless at least one its primary energy sources is not renewable, it can not be considered green. (At the very least, the overhead should come from renewable sources.)

So don’t get confused by grandiose claims, scale, and jargon. Ask for these third-party verified metrics. Then you’ll know how green the data centre really is.

What To Look For in a Modern Inventory Management System

A recent article in Canadian Transportation and Logistics on “when choosing new logistics software, true competitive value comes from creative execution not just buying the hottest system” made some great points in what to look for when choosing a new inventory management / warehouse management system. Often overlooked, the following features are important:

  • multi-mode inventory update
    The system should accept automated updates from POS systems and manual updates from individuals who “eyeball” inventory.
  • automated “push” updates to individual locations
    A user shouldn’t have to log-in to a central portal to get inventory updates across corporate locations. The updates should be “pushed” to individual clients automatically, just like RSS feeds are “pushed” to client readers.
  • integration with Excel
    Let’s face it, some locations aren’t going to have modern inventory management systems and some users just aren’t going to let Excel die.
  • one-time event tracking
    Not all inventory moves in regular shipments. Unless one time events are tracked, the full picture is not gained and an understanding of the breakdown of regular inventory movement vs. special / expedited inventory movement will be missing.
  • equal support for inbound and outbound
    A storage container behind a store can be a “warehouse” which can redistribute inventory to other stores where its needed. Thus, inbound (to the store) and outbound (to other stores) are equally important.
  • Business Intelligence (BI) support
    Either built-in, or easily supported through XML export.
  • a Multi-Tenant SaaS Implementation
    The “cloud” is where it’s at for many companies, so failing to support the “cloud” will limit adoption and integration options.