OK Glass, How Can You Help Improve Supply Chain Visibility?

Unless you have been living under a rock or staying with the Flintstones over the past few weeks you may not have heard about the next big consumer electronics device called Google Glass.  For years Apple has dominated the spending power of today’s tech savvy consumers, but is the tide about to change in favour of Google and their new piece of ‘wearable’ kit? 

Google Glass has only been out for a few weeks in the US and they have not even released the developer kit yet to allow new apps to be created but already many industry analysts are speculating that this could potentially be a game changer in the competitive consumer electronics industry and provide an edge for Google over their arch rival Apple.  Time will tell I guess, but YouTube is beginning to get flooded with videos of how these glasses work.  Given there are so many videos available I won’t go into too much detail in this blog post except to say that the most important aspect of these glasses is the tiny screen that allows the user to view different types of information.

So it got me thinking, how could something like this work in the context of the supply chain?, could it make our lives easier in terms of how we interact and work with a trading partner community or access B2B related  information?, analyse Big Data?, will it compliment the many business apps that are now being released for tablet devices? or will it herald the introduction of a new generation of apps? I guess we have become so use to how we interact with today’s mobile apps on phones and tablets, Google Glass provides a way to do things very differently.

Given the wearable nature of this device, even though they currently cost around $1500, I think they would be ideal for the transportation or logistics industry. Tesco has just opened one of their largest distribution centres in the UK, similar in size to twelve football pitches and having twelve miles of racking. I am sure Glass could help to speed up the location of specific goods in the warehouse and even use projected satellite navigation images to guide the ‘pickers’ to a specific storage bin or pallet.  Perhaps combining augmented reality with the image seen in Glass would allow goods to be ‘visually marked’ so that they can be found immediately.

What about if you are expecting a delivery of new products?, the image below shows a view from within Glass, selecting Trace Shipment would let you know exactly where a shipment is whilst moving across a supply chain. Locate Part in Warehouse would guide the picker to the location of the goods. Any delays and a video conference could be setup with the 3PL provider to discuss the progress of a shipment.

Once the package has been tracked down you may want to Scan Bar Code to view further details on the shipment.  You may want to run a quick inventory check or you may want to query when the next shipment is due.

From a retail store perspective, Glass could be used to examine specific products, may be placing a request to get empty shelves filled up by instructing Glass to Scan QR code. If stock levels are getting low and the primary supplier has run out of stock then you could search the procurement platform to Locate Alternative Supplier and place an order directly with them instead.

Now there is a bit of work to do behind the scenes to get something like this up and running, developing a suitable logistics related app, integrating the API with your back end business systems, through web services.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this appears at some point in the future, who knows may be the augmented reality solution that I discussed in an earlier blog would complement Glass in some way ?  I will be discussing further supply chain related applications for Google Glass in future blog entries.