Wireless Technology Migration:
Why and When?
Today's competitive, agile business demands anytime/anywhere connectivity and access to real time data. Many supply chain management solutions rely on wireless technology for Automatic Identification/Data Capture (AIDC) to ensure supply chain efficiency. With the rapid evolution of wireless networks along with compliance issues and ever-changing logistics, migration to advanced wireless systems is inevitable. It's also necessary: failure to adapt has negative implications with both suppliers and customers and technology missteps could potentially lead to significant downtime and costly workarounds. This paper helps identify businesses that should migrate to newer wireless technologies, and offers a road map that will help you discover the best possible technology management partner.
Driving Factors Behind Wireless Technology Migration
Many organizations have experienced the benefits of wireless technologies for Automatic Identification/Data Capture including improved speed and accuracy of inventory counts and lower costs. Moving from a paper-based or manual process to an automated system results in tangible ROI. However, when migrating to newer technology after having experienced the initial results of automated processes, ROI is not always the driving factor. Instead, outdated technology, security concerns and compliance requirements are forcing companies throughout industries to consider migrating to advanced wireless systems for supply chain operations. Failure to upgrade to newer, more advanced technologies could potentially impact productivity and lead to significant downtime, security vulnerabilities and non-compliance issues. Any one of these issues alone can not only have a huge impact on a company's bottom line but can seriously jeopardize the organization's success.
Outdated Technology
Since the late 1980's, AIDC technology has been experiencing a product life cycle decline. Through a series of standardizations and technology updates, the lifetime for AIDC devices has gone from an 8 to 10-year cycle to a 2 to 3-year cycle. Legacy infrastructure components adopted in the past 4-5 years, such as switches, access points, ports, and components, as well as wireless devices such as hand held terminals are currently or will soon be at the end of life.
The lifetime for AIDC devices has gone from an 8 to 10-year cycle to a 2 to 3-year cycle.
Common Platforms
To further complicate the situation, platform standardization becomes next to impossible when using older wireless technology and as acquisitions become more prevalent, standardization has become a key IT initiative. Many companies are joining together and trying to integrate countless devices and solutions across disparate operations. Standardization is top of mind for many companies because having a hybrid of technologies causes issues including channel interference, terminal end user and encryption code concerns, as well as vendor management and infrastructure support problems. Cost of ownership increases because companies can't support all of the combined technologies and can't share technical resources (such as a common spares pool), which increases costs and complicates maintenance and management.
Take, for example, a global manufacturer operating over 100 facilities worldwide with an extensive, global distribution network.
