In an article entitled Mobile Technology and the Supply Chain, author Mary Shacklett  who is the founder and president of Transworld Data, presents a great overview of how far mobile technology has come in the past five years in support of supply chain efficiencies across multiple industries and involving many new applications. Her piece details how companies are saving time and money and safeguarding products using a variety of mobile implementations. She even includes a brief mention of a healthcare solution that tracks human organs on donor networks.

Of relevance to everyone, however, is Ms. Shacklett’s point that mobile technology had gone real-time and is being integrated with core, centralized, enterprise business applications. That’s something we talk about all the time because it just makes sense to use the systems that are in place, to have these systems trigger labels and label data, and to have a centralized system that can be managed and controlled to make sure the right label goes on the right product at the right time. As this relates to mobile technology, Ms. Shacklett writes:

…the most significant advancement from mobile over the past five years has not come from the end mobile units themselves, but rather from their ability to integrate real-time with the “heavy hitter” backend systems that run the supply chain, and not in a delayed, batch mode.

You can see her complete article, courtesy of  World Trade Magazine, here.