Q: How do you really teach ‘Internet of Things’ to a supply chain guy? Without losing them at “Smart” and “Connected”?
A: Beyond generalities, it does not mean much to a ‘Supply Chain Guy’. As in a functional consultant or manager or a planner. To him it simply means some ‘information’ coming from somewhere and he doesn’t know what to do it with. Unless it’s a part of the out-of-the-box ‘Automatic’ thing.
E.g. A signal from a device notifies that scheduler’s Fiori app – Resource RX102 is not available from tomorrow 2 pm until further notice. That doesn’t help. He doesn’t even know what it is unless he has the patience to dig what RX102 is and how overloaded it is. Since the only other tech he knows is Email, he needs to get one notification citing thus
Bro,
Our ‘smart’ device with a built-in machine learning algorithm detected that a machine RX102 will be down from tomorrow. We notice that you have released some production orders this and that. So you can do the following to remedy the situation.
– Reschedule these production orders by blocking this time off the resource.
– If there is an alternate resource available, consider scheduling some of your operations there.
– if that too is not possible and If, there are customer orders that are confirmed based on this production, find other ways of fulfilling it, like moving stuff from another warehouse.
– If that too is not possible, do not commit anything to customers until further notice.
-If you are not sure what to do, talk to your MBA supervisor.
Now that is some useful email I want triggered.
What’s this Rant about?
I hate dehumanizing messages and notifications in software. These messages made good careers of ‘consultants’. I got one on my Ola app today. It meant some mambo Jumbo. So, I had to shut down and restart my phone and it was working all fine.
