netzooid

I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into coordination as it relates software, people and organizations.

On one end we have email, RSS/Atom, and web. All very loosely coordinated. Nearly everyone has email (hey Warren Buffet, you listening?), nearly everyone uses the web, and more and more people are aware of RSS/Atom. People can go out and start sharing information in a very loosely coordinated fashion. This comes at the expense of the ability to capture domain specific data or provide high security. When you move into the enterprise things fall apart.

Which brings me to the other end of the spectrum – I’ll loosely refer to it as SOA for now. With web services industry, groups, organizations, and even individuals can create domain specific languages. We have a broad basis of web service specs now (SOAP, WSDL, WS-Addressing, WS-Security, WS-….). On top of this people are developing specs like the Physical Markup Language which is a way to share RFID data. While RSS could embed this data, it isn’t really suited for it. There a couple problems with the SOA approach though…

Thought

When embarking on the SOA approach it requires a lot of up front thought. One must develop schemas, wsdls, etc. One must get every department to agree on a schema. One must worry about extensibility and versioning. And then there is scalability. And then there is choosing the right software platforms.

Coordination

If you do anything outside your organization it requires a lot coordination. For instance in a very fragmented industry (i.e. logistics), no one player can establish The Standard for everyone else. Getting everyone on board for a standard can take years. And there are huge benefits to sharing the data NOW.

Agility

Of course once you’ve decided on a standard, its already nearly worthless. But you’ve probably already committed to the software as well for the forseeable future. What happens when you need to extend? Or even worse – you need somethign radically different?

Data Control

All the above are issues, but one concerns me more than the others. Data control. Lets take the example of RFID. This page says it all, but let me describe. An item tagged via RFID will pass from a supplier, to a warehouse, to a distributor, to a retailer. Each one of these people contains a piece of information about the product as it passes through the suppline chain.

Who owns this data? How do we get at it?

Central storage? As a manufacturer you going to require every warehouse that you work with to send their data to your database?

What about distributed query of all the partners? Will every warehouse that you use be willing to adopt the same interfaces so you can query the particular tag? Will you have to write software against each partner’s interface?

What about security? Limiting subsets of data to specific people is hard, but not insurmountable. But a twist is that there may be an implicit trust relationship involved. If I am a manufacturer, my transportation provider may be partnering with a warehouser. Since my transportation provider trusts me, can I access the warehouse database?

Does the manufacturer have an implicit ownership right to the rfid data generated at the warehouse? Even if they have a right to it, how do we get at it and do we share it in a meaninful fashion? Can the warehouser charge extra for the data?

Data ownership and control brings up a lot more questions than it answers. Will SOA, ESBs, ERPs, middleware, and a host of technologies save us from data hell? I feel there must be a better way, but I have no real answers.

Following up on my recent post on mapping APIs, it appears Microsoft has straightened out its licensing and you can use Virtual Earth for commercial usage. Chandu writes

You can use the Virtual Earth APIs for free as long as you use the What/Where search boxes on your map. This is also makes sense from a revenue stand point since you will have the opportunity to make money by placing advertisements on your site in a revenue sharing model (more details to be announced at a later date)

Chandu also says that if you don’t want to abide by the above you can get a MapPoint.NET license and that will cover your usage. This is great news!

Doing some map hacking today. However, I’m coming up frustrated at the lack of solutions which have good answers to all of the following.

VirtualEarth has the coolest Javascript API. Its killer flaw is that it can’t be used commercially yet. Google Maps looks good, but lack of geocoding is sucky. geocoder.us costs money for commercial use, although cheap. I may just write my own geocoder using the Tiger data. I’d like to have Canadian geocoding though too. Yahoo Maps would really rock if I didn’t have to embed their stupid web page in mine. Last, the MapPoint web service rocks, but startup is really expensive. I’d gladly pay $100/mo but I think its roughly $8K/yr minimum with MapPoint.

sigh

From the latest Supply Chain Digest First Thoughts

Think about it – why won’t someone start “Demand Planners Inc.“ in Bangalore, staffed with a bunch of brilliant forecasters with PhD’s that speak English impeccably?

Its true, “outsourcing” is spreading to everything. I know a trucking carrier/broker startup that is planning on outsourcing a lot of itself. They have live video link ups between the US and India.

Technology will have a huge effect on this as the article alludes to. I always maintain that technology pretty much sucks now in logistics and SCM. Everything is very expensive, high barrier – which is the wrong model. Think how something as simple as RSS could change the industry. What a great way to keep people abreast of whats happening throughout the supply chain! (Sidenote: Thats why we integrated it into DocShot – so its possible get feeds of your documents going in and out of your organization). Or look at how IM is changing things. As things move to completely digital, your physical location matters a whole lot less (I say this as someone who spends nearly all his time working from home).

Do you believe traditional supply chain jobs in planning and execution could be outsourced to lower cost countries? What would be the barriers? What should SCM professionals do to minimize the chance that their job goes to India?

Absolutely, outsourcing will change things. Ultimately, you need to find something that you offer the most value at. If someone else, can offer more value then you – here or in another country – you should take a look at what you’re doing.

Dan Gilmore on the 50% Problem:

…50% of all of our operations are also performing below the mid-point – but how many of us know it, or are willing to admit it? In my experience, it’s a very small minority… Why do so many companies overestimate their own supply chain performance levels? What can be done to reduce the personal risk and encourage more individuals and managers to accurately look in the mirror?

As I think about this, to be in the top you need the right people (as pointed out in this book). While there are only so many good people to go around, there needs to be vision from the top on hiring the best.

My other thought is eliminate corporate bullshit. Create a culture where you can and are expected to look at the not so happy facts. Question everything.

Michael Connor commented on my last post

With respect to integration, it’s one of the biggest challeges today. It reminds me of high school sex, everyone’s talking about it but few people are really doing it.

Combine that with this excert from Phil on Loosely Coupled

Microsoft has learnt a lot from its multi-billion dollar acquisitions of business software vendors Great Plains and Navision, but it’s probably ready to write off that off to experience now. For Microsoft Business Solutions has signally failed to progress the componentization of its products under an oft-deferred plan codenamed Project Green. What I believe Microsoft has learned is that established business applications vendors are congenitally incapable of doing what’s necessary to adapt their applications to the requirements of standards-based services architectures. This valuable lesson has encouraged the vendor to concentrate on making sure that it protects its server products, while making sure that Windows and Office become the ‘smart client’ beneficiaries of the collapse not just of MBS but of every major business application vendor’s market share.

The market is really ripe for integration. I think Microsoft saw this. In logistics at least costs are going through the roof but providers are doing little or nothing to increase their efficiencies.

I think Phil’s analysis about MS Office is dead on. Thats basically what I’m doing next week is writing an MS Office plugin for our software. Documents and custom data come in from Word and Access. Thanks to Microsoft’s really superb effort as of late with respect to integration I anticipate I can do this very quickly.

From Java, GIS, & Logistics:

Let’s Put Data on Tags! I think this is the worst idea imaginable, especially when it’s considered an answer to integration…just imagine an Intermec tag with only 108 bytes and a bunch of companies fighting over what data should be on the tag and what the format will be. A tag should simply contain an ID. A VAN or proprietary system can then enable organizations to attach data to that tag. Permissions and security can then protect that data and control visibility. The only reason to ever put data on tags is when they won’t need to be read by other companies and you don’t have access to the net (think military). Also, there are already people out there hacking data on tags and that even furthers my argument.

Amen to that. RFID tags should only contain an ID. The underlying system should manage the data associated with the tag. It highlights the bigger problem in the logistics – the failure to interconnect vendor’s supply chain systems and leverage their data. Which highlights the even bigger issuess a) a lot of logistics software is just plain awful and b) a lot of logistics executives are ignorant of how to use technology to create reductions in cost.

I’ve been working off and on in the logistics field for a while now writing software. Logistics is fascinating to me – its one big optimization problem that never ends. But, for the most part logistics people aren’t tech savvy, so the software and logistics industries haven’t seemed to mesh well in my opinion. So its good to see logisitics bloggers like Michael Connor. He’s only posted two articles so far, but the one today on managing GIS data is chock full of useful information (at least to me…).

I’ve also noticed a couple other logistics news sites lately with RSS feeds:

• Logistics Today
• RFID Weblog
• Supply Chain Digest
• Supply Chain Systems Magazine

And if you’re really desperate, I have a del.icio.us logistics category.

If you know of any more good blogs or sites, let me know!

Recently, I have been intrigued with the idea of a camera phone barcode reader. Unfortunately the idea is not my own. Semacode long ago (in internet time) created a 2D barcode reader for a bunch of camera phones. 2D barcodes are like the normal barcodes you see, but add a second dimension so they are a matrix of black and white squares. I had an Intermec Pocket PC a while back and I scanned in a 2D barcode on a UPS package. I was amazed at all the information it could hold. It contained my tracking number, name, address, phone number(s), and more. Semacode marketed it as a way to transfer information into electronic devices. Semacode was hoping people would start printing these 2D barcodes on business cards so people could read in contact information easily.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered not many people use 2D barcodes. However, there are an abundance of regular ol’ one dimensional barcodes out there. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a 1D barcode reader for a phone? Then, when I was at Barnes I could scan a book and get reviews off from Amazon. Or I could do a price comparison.