Supply Chain Frontiers issue #42
In 2010 the Center for Latin-American Logistics Innovation (CLI) entered into an alliance with the MIT NextLab to develop innovative mobile technologies for managing supply chains in emerging countries. The partnership now has an impressive slate of research projects.
“Logistics is one of the areas in which NextLab has recently focused. We believe that if you improve the logistics, you can improve wealth distribution. Also, there is much to be done to optimize the processes of Latin American companies by taking advantage of the intelligence of mobile devices,” says Jhonatan Rotberg, Founder and Director of the MIT NextLab.
The work now underway in Colombia builds on R&D carried out last year by NextLab in the logistics field. This latest phase in the evolution of the lab is called Enterprise On-Demand. “Enterprise On-Demand is extending the principles of m-logistics into other areas of the enterprise,” Rotberg explains.
CLI strategic partner companies are providing expertise and funding for the research, and are working with 22 students from Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia. “Students have a valuable opportunity to complement their education in technology with projects applied to the real world,” says CLI researcher Julian Lasso.
The program of five projects (see below) offers huge potential for improving the efficiency of supply chains in developing countries.
Mobile Sales and Customer Service (sponsor: Alpina)
This project is creating a smart phone application that enables real-time sales transactions on the road using a mobile device. “The application turns you into a company sales representative by giving you access to inventory information, customer databases, and orders,” says Rotberg.
Mobile Warehouse Management and Point of Sale (sponsor: Unilever)
The mobile application also has a hardware component. It provides information on fixed assets, in this case thousands of ice cream carts that move from location to location in multiple countries. In addition to tracking the whereabouts of these units, the application provides information on maintenance requirements, sales, and product status such as temperature.
Mobile Shipping, Delivering, and Invoicing (sponsor: Alpina)
Tracking the interactions between trucks and the loading/unloading facilities operated by shippers is the main purpose of this application. “It helps create more transparency in the interactions between these actors,” Rotberg explains. The application enables each party to input data on events such as truck arrivals and departures in real time to a central database.
Mobile Fleet Management and Trucking (sponsor: MLS)
“Shippers can select the right trucking supplier, and the supplier can find the most appropriate truck with this application,” says Rotberg. For example, trucks are matched with the size and location of a load, and suppliers can compare the cost of different transportation options. The ultimate aim is to help create free markets for freight transportation.
NFC-enabled Peer-to-Peer Mobile Transactions
The idea here is to enable the various applications under development to use NFC (Near Field Communications), a technology that is often associated with mobile payments. “We are creating an NFC-enabled engine that can be used for transactions that have a monetary value as well as those that do not,” says Rotberg.
The work with CLI is part of an international network of partnerships that NextLab is developing. “We have worked in 14 projects in third-world countries. Today, we have affiliated universities at the program in Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Colombia, and soon we will be expanding to Peru, Chile, and Argentina,” Rotberg says.
For more information on the CLI projects contact Ana María Prieto, CLI Public Relations, at email: aprieto@logyca.org. For more information on NextLab contact Jhonatan Rotberg.