INDUSTRY VIEW

ANDRE LUECHT , GLOBAL STRATEGY LEAD , MANUFACTURING , TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS , ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES

Every pallet needs to be given a digital voice and can serve as a reliable field informant , reporting when , where , why hardships are arising for incomeproducing goods . Pallets can plug the gaps in stories being told by other business tools like inventory management , financial systems , net promoter scores , says Andre Luecht at Zebra Technologies .

100 years ago , he was driven by the need to improve the efficiency of transporting goods , as supplies needed to move more quickly and effectively to support a growing population and bolster economic health .

However , truth of the pallet ’ s value is a bit different today . The pallet is no longer just a physical mechanism to move larger quantities of goods as one . It can be the digital conduit used to transmit many of the data points that every CIO – and every business provider – needs to understand where and how to make supply chain operations faster , safer , and more economical .

Every pallet needs to be given a digital voice . It can serve as a reliable field informant , reporting when , where , and why hardships are arising for income-producing goods – as well as how to fix them . More importantly , that pallet can help fill in the holes in the stories

Scan tunnels equipped with RFID readers can report a pallet ’ s location in a second ’ s time , making it hard to lose sight of goods .

being told by other business informants : the inventory management system , the financial system , even net promoter scores .

For example , if data collated by other information systems indicates consistently late or lost shipments , an RFID tag could be attached to every pallet to track real-time movements . Scan tunnels equipped with fixed RFID readers , or frontline workers equipped with mobile RFID readers , can report a pallet ’ s location in a second ’ s time , making it hard to lose sight of those goods .

Technically , a fixed barcode scanner or mobile computer with a built-in barcode scanner could also be used to record a pallet ’ s movements and report the last-known location . However , that either requires someone to have a direct line of sight into the pallet as it passes and intentionally scan the barcode or for the barcode on the pallet to be scanned by a fixed device at a checkpoint .

That requires a lot of perfect positioning , which does not always happen . Even if it does , that barcode scan only tells you the pallet ’ s

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