Sara Castellanos reports in the Wall Street Journal:
Blockchain has the potential to increase the transparency and efficiency of data-sharing among carriers, brokers, consumers, vendors and other supply chain stakeholders. Embedding advanced chips in package labels could provide better visibility into where packages are at a certain time. “One of the tricky things for CIOs today is to identify the emerging technologies that will in fact have significant business impact."
Executives at United Parcel Service Inc. say it is becoming crucial to invest in emerging technologies to get ahead of competitors, even if such investments don’t have a tangible return on investment right away.
The parcel carrier has launched early-stage tests over the past several months with cutting-edge technologies, ranging from blockchain to drones to advanced chips.
“We had to be more apt to take on risk and get involved in some of these technologies at an early stage,” said UPS CEO David Abney in an interview at an investor conference.
An experimental blockchain project to manage and track the status of claims, for example, is underway at UPS Capital, a division that offers supply chain finance and insurance services. Blockchain has the potential to increase the transparency and efficiency of data-sharing among carriers, brokers, consumers, vendors and other supply chain stakeholders, executives say.
The company formed a division called Advanced Technology Group in early 2017 as a way to identify and experiment with such new technologies and weed out projects that wouldn’t be a good fit, Mr. Abney said.
“We don’t want to be implementing tech that competitors have already started implementing. We want to be on the front end,” he said.
Executives at the investor conference spoke about technology’s crucial role in modernizing the company as it laid out plans to cater to more profitable customers, such as small businesses. The company is facing criticism from analysts that its focus on carrying millions of packages from large shippers has squeezed margins.
The Advanced Technology Group is overseen by Juan Perez, UPS’s chief information and engineering officer, and works with startups and university researchers to identify, test and recommend technologies that could be deployed throughout the company within the next three to five years.
“One of the tricky things for CIOs today is to identify the emerging technologies that will in fact have significant business impact. It’s really easy to get distracted,” Mr. Perez said in an interview.
One technology that could have near-term business value involves embedding advanced chips in package labels, he said. The chips could provide better visibility into where packages are in a facility at a certain time — data that could then be used by drivers and people who load delivery vehicles.
The group, which Mr. Perez said is small but collaborates with different areas of the engineering business, also is using drone technologies as a security measure to constantly monitor activity around the perimeter of a yard in Denver, Colo., where the company’s trailers enter and exit to load and unload. Images from the drones could eventually be used not only for security purposes but also to help prevent traffic jams and improve efficiency throughout the delivery network, he said.
“It would be foolish for us to not pay attention to these emerging technologies,” Mr. Perez said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment