While cruising over the slopes of the Sella Massive in Italy last week I frequently checked the daily performance throughout the day. The covered distance, height differences, average speed, max speed and locations we came across were all available to us in a nicely graphed online interface based on the unique id and chip of our ski passes.

It has become so natural for us to be able to see all this information online based on a hardly visible microchip in the pass; however I suddenly realized that I had become a part of an info chain. Each time I passed the entrance of a lift my ‘time stamp and location’ were stored somewhere in a database. At the end of the day all data was processed and converted in a kind of graphical logbook which not only showed my performance, but also at which time I checked-in to which lift, the altitude per selected time buffer etc. So in short, for the first time in my life I was using the benefits of the internet of things, or perhaps better said humans instead of ‘things’. And that is a weird idea, because in my world that is normally spoken something for moving products or parcels or containers or whatever ‘thing’ we can think of but not me as a human being.

It came to my mind again that what we can do with all these available techniques and data is slowly becoming common practice in our daily life and it all interacts together. The jump to supply chain execution and management is again made easy with the story above of course. All ski lifts in this huge skiing area are working together as sequenced data partners in the supply chain and that is also what we are doing for the supply chain partners of our clients. For the systems at the ski lifts it is not that difficult, because they are all linked to the same IT-backbone.

In the supply chain arena it is quite different, because many partners that have to work together are using completely different systems and techniques. And that is where Quyntess comes to help, we make it possible that all partners can work and communicate seamlessly together despite of a very complex and mixed IT-landscape. The materials in the internal and external supply chains move from ‘lift-to-lift’, with an average speed and expected time of arrival at the next ‘lift’. If the ETA is not met or somebody reports a problem ‘on the slope’, the system will alert those who need to know, showing also impact analysis. From that alerting point of view we are still a bit better that the ski-app. Currently, it does not inform the downslope lift yet that a skier is expected at a certain time but has not checked in yet…. However, there is no doubt that this type of behavior will also not be far away any more for the internet of skiing.

Internet of Things

Quyntess

Roeland Vermeulen

SCM

Supply Chain

Supply Chain Arena