New Technologies in Value Chain Management
Scott W. Power
Kaplan University
September 28, 2011
There are many new technologies out there that aide in the value chain for management of delivery of goods, maintaining of shelf stock and keeping multiple warehouses connected in real time. With the new advent of cell phone technology there is transition from the new smart phones to aide in the value chain. These will continue to assist with the customer service aspect of the company and allow more real time knowledge of the current running of the company.
In looking at cell phone use of the value chain, there was a good example on a TV commercial. The commercial was based on AT&T’s use of their smart phone in a pizza shop. This pizza shop, called “Jet’s Pizza” uses a smart phone to demonstrate the use of a smart phone aides one of their customer’s business. The commercial shows one of their food inspectors analyzing the food making process at each location, looking at how the food is produced, the freshness of the product and the delivery of such a product to judge the effectiveness of the location. Of course, I am summarizing these facts. They did mention that the work of using the smart phones allow the food inspectors to perform the same duty in one hour that normally took two weeks to analyze.
Using cell phones for use of product development, or freshness analysis, is just one such feature. Another such feature is combing the use of the cell phones GPS in helping a company monitor their deliveries. D.W. Morgan utilizes a phone application on iPhone’s platform for such a purpose. Prior to their use of the cell phone application, they stated that the proper location of their deliveries was always 24 hours behind where their drivers actually were. Using the new technology allows them to keep proper track of where their products are in the delivery chain. A technology that was available ten years ago for hundreds of thousands