Supply Chain of Blood

It's not too often that I link to articles, but when the New York Times features a cover story on supply chains, it's got to be something worth sharing. If you can handle reading about blood and pigs intestines, take a read of this article that tries to trace the supply chain of a medical drug that uses the intestines of pigs. Oink!

Twists in Chain of Supplies for Blood Drug

Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Supply Chain

Working at IBM, or any job for that matter, has its pluses and minuses. One of the pluses for me is the access I have to IBM's $5 billion research organization. At the pound of a few digits on the phone I can speak with some of the smartest people in the world.

Last week I discovered that some of these geniuses are have developed a tool that IBM is testing within its own supply chain to help reduce carbon emissions. While I don't want to spoil the results and findings of the paper that will be presented next months, the tool lets the user run "what if" scenarios until the nth degree. For example, if you need to ship a 4.7 pound package from Mexico to New York the tool can determine the carbon footprint based on route, mode of transportation and even the type of engine of the car, boat or plane. The user can then get a recommendation from the tool based on the most earth friendly mode. How cool is that?

I'll disclose more and share the finding of the report later next month.

Improving the logistics of delivering pizza

Just in time for the Super Bowl, which is also apparently the busiest day of the year for pizza makers, Domino's Pizza has created the Pizza Tracker. Domino's is a US based pizza chain and to help improve customer service they are starting with logistics - ahh the delicious smell of the supply chain.
It works quite simply. Once you place your order the tracker follows your pizza from prep to bake to box to delivery. They aren't using RFID tags or GPS tags on the pizza. I believe they simply know the average time for each step and simply start the tracking counter once the order is taken. But, it would be very cool if they were using RFID on the box or perhaps on some sort of high tech pizza tray that is always sitting under the pizza tracking it all the way. The RFID reader could also tell you the temperature in the oven. Why you'd want to know that, I'm not sure, but it would be cool. Then obviously, GPS in the delivery truck could take over.