This is one of the more fascinating areas of the use of wearable computers in the manufacturing industry, as there is always the need to keep customers informed of their orders, especially for those products that are custom made. Consider the implications of wearable computers being able to give a customer the status on over 1,000 PCs being built to be rolled out through their retail locations. As any roll-out of new technology takes a high level of collaboration and synchronization across an enterprise, having the most critical information of all - when the systems will be ready for configuring and shipping to the 1,000 sites they have been built for - is critical. From a logistics standpoint the coordination of all the other systems, processes, support staffs and delivery services to get the 1,000 systems delivered and installed in 1,000 different store locations, for example, would only be possible with the level of immediate information captured, analyzed and delivered with wearable computers. In this context of major new systems rollout the use of wearable computers could spell the difference between meeting the deadlines for producing the systems in the first place, and most critically, making sure the delivery providers get enough notice to have their trucks at the manufacturing center to deliver the systems in time. The entire logistics process of creating these systems, coordinating with the transportation companies to get them delivered, and synchronizing with services companies to get them installed and up in running, is all made more accurate and efficient using wearable computers. The real-time access to information that wearable computers could provide throughout this major project workflow would spell the difference between deadlines being met or not and the systems being installed and up and running. This real-time data and analysis aspect of wearable computers also has the...

The role of the DC is to act as a buffer between high levels of customer demand on the retail or store front side vs. suppliers on the other. Wearable computers, equipped with WiFi access, would be able to define in real time what mixed-product pallets would need to be sent to which store. These mixed-product pallets could be create literally on the fly from inbound orders received by warehouse operators fulfilling orders throughout the DC. Instead of having orders queue up and print in the DC office, those fulfillment team members in a DC could get the orders in real time, create the mixed-product pallets, and get them out literally within hours instead of days. This would trim over a week, cumulatively, off the time it would take for a retail outlet to get an order fulfilled.
The use of wearable computers as workstations to send the status of orders being picked and report back on the completing of pick, pack and ship operations on mixed-pallet shipments would create a highly responsive supply chain as well. From the orders being fulfilled in real time and reported using wearable computers, the inventory balances of specific products would be decreased, eventually leading to automated ordering of replacement products. Wearable computers then would be the vital link in logistics process workflows to enable both services and manufacturing companies to be more responsive to market and consumer demand.

References

Aimi. AMR Research (2005, October 25). Retailers save Money by Controlling in-Bound Logistics. (Alert). Boston, MA. Greg Aimi, Pg. 1

Weston and Garf. (2005).AMR Research. (2005, November 8). Wal-Mart and UPS: Tales in Superior Supply Chains. Randy Weston and Rob Garf. (Assessment of Fall Supply Chain Conference). Boston, MA.…