Thin Air: How Wireless Technology Supports Lean ... - Prepaid MVNO

The Lean Wireless Missions • 87
are also demanding the subscription business model which they have come
to enjoy in software as a service (SaaS). They want to use Wireless technology,
but don’t necessarily want to own it, maintain it, or pay extra for upgrades.
The richly RFID-enabled supply chain has yet to materialize simply
because all companies do not adopt technology at the same pace. An RFIDenabled
process at one company may have enormous benefits for that company,
yet not suit their suppliers or trading partners. One common barrier
to the adoption of EPC/RFID technology for Walmart suppliers is the lack
of warehouse management systems in their facilities; they still perform
inventory control using paper and clipboard. They recognize the benefits
of Wireless, yet refuse to suffer any cost or disruption to implement it.
Here again, the Lean approach is necessary to make the connection
between technology and the process improvements and set realistic
expectations for the technology. Wireless can ultimately save enormous
amounts of busywork in maintenance, production, and other processes,
while generating enormous amounts of busywork for the IT department.
In essence, rather than outsource the pain of ownership, poorly implemented
Wireless will insource the pain to the IT department.
The Answer: Find the Right Tool for the Right Job
The Wireless answer to most business challenges is usually the simplest,
most effective, and most cost-effective answer possible. But sometimes
Wireless is not the answer at all. Remember that earlier in this chapter,
Entigral CEO L. Allen Bennett concluded that a prison did not need a realtime
location system to track tools; it needed a peg board. But the prison
did require RTLS to track keys, which were breaking off in locks; prisoners
who had little else to do could look for key tips and fashion new keys in
the prison machine shop. That was a better use of RFID technology, which
Bennett did recommend.
RTLS was also the answer to preventing damage to the space shuttle
during construction. The inventory challenge was to remove any tools that
went into the shuttle. Technicians work on suspended walkways, which
keeps the pressure off the space shuttle components. If a technician left
a tool on the walkway and the walkway tilted, the tool could damage a
component. The answer was a simple inventory system that ensured that
any tool that went into the shuttle was taken out again, a cost-effective and
Wireless answer to a specific business challenge.
© 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC