Trucking Technology Report - Nov. 1
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Both the online report and e-mail are sponsored by @Track Communications, a supplier of wireless communications and dispatch services.
Today's Technology Headlines:
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Tokyo Show Displays Smart Trucks and Buses
The Tokyo auto show recently displayed some of the newest wireless technology for vehicle drivers. Japan's trucking industry hopes the event will spark more truck sales. While the nation's car industry has been rebounding from lagging sales, truck and bus production have continued to struggle. Truck production during 1999 dropped by 9.8% from 1998, after it had dropped 20% from 1997.
Firm Offers Wireless Truck Refueling
Grenley-Stewart Resources offers mobile fueling to trucks via wireless devices. The service can allow truckers to save money by lowering the amount of time typically required by truckers when refueling at commercial fueling stations. The main reason for the reduced expense is that the refueling trucks conduct their operations during the night.The company provides trucks eligible for the service with "smart tags" that transmit across a radio frequency for authorizing fuel delivery. The tags are also used for the firm's integrated billing service.
When the refueling truck arrives, a wand is moved over the smart tags for authorizing refueling. The authorization code is then sent to a mobile computer owned by the driver, which in turn transmits a message to the fuel truck to begin refueling. The tags also allows the system to calculate the amount of fuel used by the vehicle since the last fill up.
IDmicro's marketing director Nathan Wright says the success of the service is a prime example of how far wireless applications have advanced. Computerworld (10/23/00) Vol. 34, No. 43, P. 54; Brewin, Bob
Buying Through the Hype of Marketplaces, Reverse Auctions
IBM (IBM) chief procurement officer John Paterson doubts whether currently fashionable e-commerce technologies such as reverse auctions and third party online marketplaces will ever live up the hype surrounding them. However, he is an emphatic proponent of online procurement: IBM will procure $40 billion worth of supplies from about 18,000 different suppliers this year over the Internet, saving the company around $350 million, he says. Although IBM expects to have all of its suppliers operating online by the end of the year, Paterson thinks the real work is yet to come. As more and more companies move their supply chain operations online, interoperability issues will become increasingly important. IBM supports the development of open standards, Paterson says, although determining which standards to support will likely be challenging.
Paterson also says that it is quite difficult to convince many suppliers to support full supply chain integration with their partners, which would entail allowing other companies to see information previously held secret. Yet this integration, and the level of collaboration it enables, is the real value of online procurement, not the reductions in transaction costs gained by removing people or paper from the process, Paterson says.
"Auctions may have some value somewhere, but they're not the process on which you run a high-volume manufacturing operation like [IBM does] here," Paterson explains. "Integration and trust with core suppliers is worth much more than anything you can save on an auction." Business 2.0 (11/14/00) Vol. 5, No. 21, P. 186; Nickell, Joe Ashbrook
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