Had an interesting business meeting this morning. While in my office in Pennsylvania, I was on speakerphone with a colleague in California while skyping (thank you, www.urbandictionary.com ) with an engineer in Moscow who left a restaurant to do the call from his car.
If this isn't the definition of technology enabling the supply chain, I don't know what is. Technology makes possible things that would never have occurred to us a year ago – or even yesterday. Since we truly are living in a flat world, we should explore any and all methods of using not only logistics technology , but any and all technology to improve our industry.
In my Skype example, the technology came first, opening up the possibility for cheap computer-to-computer communication and easy global collaboration. What's even more liberating is to start with the IDEA – then apply technology to enable even the wildest notions. Take same-day delivery of online orders. Amazon and Walmart are two of the biggest names positioning themselves for retail's "holy grail."
Thinking like this pushes the entire supply chain industry to a place where we are forced to change or perish. Here's to the dreamers, the risk takers – those willing to chase agility and flexibility in logistics to achieve nirvana.