Pervasive Computing

Live on Mobility TV

• Reduce Costs, Raise Output
• Track Assets and People in Real Time
• See the Power of Context-Aware Mobility

Improve Asset Visibility Through Context-Aware Mobility:

Register Here: http://www.cisco.com/go/semreg/motvjuly15/163994_8

Live Video Webcast, Tuesday, July 15, 2008
10–11 a.m. Pacific Time/1–2 p.m. Eastern Time

Locating assets and people in real time in today’s fast-paced, highly mobile business world can enable your organization to reduce excess costs, improve business process efficiency, and minimize errors and delays. Now, learn how context-aware mobility solutions can provide this visibility across your entire enterprise.

This live 60-minute Mobility TV webcast will show you how companies are already using technologies such as received signal strength indication (RSSI) and time difference of arrival (TDoA) to manage their high-value assets more effectively. Benefit from their real-world experiences and insights as they share best practices and practical tips.

Find out why Cisco technology partners such as Oracle chose the new context-aware mobility software from Cisco as the platform for integrating their applications to deliver customized business solutions. Take deep dives into the top deployment considerations, including site survey, configuration, and troubleshooting. Finally, learn why context-aware mobility provides unmatched flexibility with:

• Support for the widest range of location technologies, enabling deployment in virtually any environment
• An open platform, empowering third-party application providers to create more relevant business solutions
• Simplified licensing and deployment that let you expand coverage at your own pace

Live Q&A with the Experts

Cisco context-aware mobility experts will also be available to answer your questions throughout this live Mobility TV video webcast.

Topics covered include:
• Moving beyond location applications to context-aware solutions
• Overview of technologies, including RSSI, TDOA, and chokepoint
• Integration with Oracle enterprise applications
• Deep dive covering top deployment considerations
• Customer case studies sharing best practices

Also Watch:

Cisco Takes the Mobility Network to the Next Level
Learn how to enable business mobility with ease and from more places than ever before. See the innovative network architecture from Cisco that will enable you to eliminate the silos that divide your networks, applications, and mobile devices.

When measuring the efficiency of a supply chain, there is no better indicator of fulfillment man holes and planning stop signs than that holy grail of metrics - "The Perfect Order". It is an elusive goal to most and is subjected to various influencers like the "perfect" matching of supply to demand as close to the pickup time as possible, maintaining as real a visibility picture of the various echelons of supply etc.

So, where are we now? Of course there are acceptable levels of perfection, especially in a discipline as fraught with uncertainties as operations. Even so, recent studies conducted reveal an interesting and optimistically challenging set of facts. On an average companies only managed 52% perfect fulfillment of their customer orders (see table below)

Imperfect Tendencies - Missing the Mark
What is a Perfect Order?

• On Time - delivered to the requested or promised date and time

• Complete - no partials over a period of time

• Damage Free - unless it is refurbished, based on contract

• Correct Invoice - usually has implications on finance integrating with Sales & operations

Research shows we are missing the mark

• 84% -WERC/DC Velocity: This is a percentile of all the above contributors.

• 80% -AMR study: From a different analyst

• 23% -Retail Compliance Council

Source: WERC 2006

What is more startling about the table above is the % of Perfect vendors within Sample = 9.5%, if that is the long tail, then where would the average vendor fall, obviously 52%.

Of course there are different disciplines contributing to making the order perfect, accurate forecasting, optimal planning to those forecasts and of course execution systems that can fulfill demand, match supplies and coordinate tasks. Of course, some of the inefficiencies are just poor business processes and outdated practices or software.

Now we have a new implement to achieving this Perfect Order - RFID, we will go ahead to explore how to identify processes for adoption, measure pilots and prove or disprove benefits. By reading between the lines you will be able to see that this approach is a short term budget qualifier and a long term continuous improvement methodology.

RFID would in essence make the job of locating, tracking those elusive supplies much easier and by transference make the matching process more efficient and streamlined. Before we go into how that can be done, we need to understand what a perfect order is. There is a perfect order to a customer and a seller, operationally of course to a seller, this means the least cost - inventory acquisition and holding, labor and space, order processing and so on, we ignore pricing and other non supply chain factors for perfection outside for now. To a customer, perfect order in our world is measured by correct item shipped, in time, without any damages.

Figure 1a: Measurement Metrics and suggested RFID solutions

Figure 1b: Measurement Metrics and suggested RFID solutions

Figure 1c: Measurement Metrics and suggested RFID solutions

Figure 1d: Measurement Metrics and suggested RFID solutions

Metrics for Comparison - Level 2 and 3 Metrics

From the benchmarks it is clear that the two major contributors to an imperfect order are "% on-time delivery" and "% complete". With sample averages for "% on time delivery" at 51.7% and "% complete" 47.7%, there is significant opportunity for improvement. It is, necessary for us to drill down to level 2 and 3 processes to be able to identify what can be improved and more importantly, what can be tracked for improvement. As industry standards for metrics gain wider adoption, companies can benchmark against industry specific best-practices, this also enables companies the opportunity to implement continuous improvement using similar scales.

Adopting Cycle Time metrics for Intra Facility Activities

While the above metrics and the facilitating RFID capabilities that benefit companies are useful, it is leveraging RFID and associated transactions and processes at the most granular levels that interest this professional. To actually adopt and measure for the purposes of continuous improvement, tracking and measured should be done at the task level.

Fig 2a: Fulfill and Deliver Cycle Time Metrics

Taking Intra-Facility operations as an example, we can again leverage and derive SCOR standards to track, measure and benchmark activities. Since Cycle Time KPI's at are the most granular level, these are the best indicators of actual efficiency improvements. This approach can be adopted during pilots to quantify possible benefits if approval is required for actual adoption.

Of course the schematic above is only a partial representation of what can be measured and what needs to be tracked. In conclusion: in order to improve order fulfillment, companies must go down to this level (II, III and lower) to track down potential improvements with regard to labor efficiency, inventory accuracy and tactical optimization.

How multi-modal capabilities empower ubiquitous computing.

Centered around the user, multi-modal computing is as much a hybrid approach to user input as multiple drive trains are to a Prius. we will attempt to answer the following questions:

• What is multi-modal and how is this different
• What are it's uses?
• And most importantly how does this benefit companies adopting it?

Fig 1a: Tethered Modern Worker

We are all used to carrying multiple devices with us and the modern forklift warrior is also encumbered by having to use a number of devices and input devices to update a system with what he/she has done. Depending on the work situation, this would include any number of inputs and communications types.

For example if the user is working in a distribution center handling returns or maintenance/repair, a typical workflow would look like the following:

• Scan received carton/case.
• Inspect the item received for damages, special instructions etc.
• Confirm the quantity into mobile unit after inspection
• If this is a custom high value line e.g. custom trucks like Peterbilt, there may be a need to possibly call the customer/returnee to get more details
• If the DC has implemented task interleaving and it is high volume season, then tasks alerting and dispatching is done using a mechanism that can page
• If there is speech available as a capability, then a worker could use this input variation along with scanning
• If there are sensor capabilities like RFID, which is one of the top uses of RFID returns for high value goods, and a hazmat or hands free operation is required then scanning, RFID and speech may all be used in conjunction.

As you can surmise, the above operations in combination or singly can involve one or many modes of inputs in the form of scanner, sensor, speech, manual mobile input and some form of automation.

Multi-modal or Aria as branded by some industry exponents, is as much a device solution capability as well as software that enables the orchestration of these machine events and inputs into a synchronized business flow.

Keep a lookout for key capabilities, TCO impact and ROI measures.....