Platoon of Autonomous Trucks

 

Six major manufacturers in the world of trucks have demonstrated that their autonomous vehicles can travel on the roads of Europe. Among them are giants like Daimler, Scania and Volvo, which we had already taught at one time or another their progress with intelligent vehicles.

The initiative is organized by the Dutch government, and by the name of European Truck Platooning challenge . A squad truck – at least a dozen – plagued technology that allows you to move independently, one after another. They have been circulating for a week, the largest independent exercise we remember in the old continent.

The teams began their journey from different parts of Europe, but the end of this adventure was in the Port of Rotterdam. The intention of companies and organizations involved is to show other governments on the continent that can carry goods with some autonomy.

One participant is Scania, a company of Volkswagen. They tell us that has been circulating autonomously for more than 2,000 kilometers, spanning four borders. No accident has occurred in the time taken tests.

The concept of assembling a squad with autonomous vehicles call it “platooning” and comment that can reduce fuel consumption by up to 15%, thanks to the proximity that can lead to another. We understand that the system is more complex, but in short we can say that the way to connect is through WiFi vehicles.

In the following video you can see what happened, it is quite long, even collects part of the final conclusion:

 

Another example of how automation is looking to be efficiently involved in all distribution channels. This technology can only be applied on motorways, but it represents a dark future for truck drivers, who see their work is gradually replaced by safer, ecological and less expensive solutions.

Victor Vera

 

 

The worldwide tour of components for manufacturing a IPhone

We all know that the majority of our technology gadgets are produced in China, but the supply and manufacturing process isn’t quite as simple as it might appear.

Apple more than most is a master at using the supply chain to its advantage, sourcing suppliers that can turn out parts in the most cost effective way whilst still adhering to the company’s quality requirements.

It estimates that an iPhone would cost $4 more if it was built in the US, but crucially for Apple it would also mean the company had to pay a lot more tax on its profits (35 percent as opposed to two percent).

There are many small components that do not go directly from the supplier to the final assembly, it must first pass through many previous phases where the equipment forming part weapon. A clear example are the pieces of fingerprint sensor of the latest iPhone. For this part of the device is ready to be assembled, there are parts that are traveling more than 19,000 kilometers.

An example of this is the iPhone Home button, as this gives a trip around the world that you could not imagine. It all starts in the Chinese province of Hunan, specifically in the city of Changsha. There is the factory of the company Lens Technology, which is responsible for making the part that touches the user when you activate your terminal. Your employees are responsible for converting the sapphire crystal (as strong as diamond) on the cover of the button.

Then they reach to  that factory the metal rings that cover this element. Production of these is on LY Technology company, which is based in Jiangsu Province, located 885 kilometers over Changsha. When both parties have already been combined, together they must travel 1,600 kilometers to the premises of the firm NXP, where they join a controller chip come from a factory in Shanghai (which has had to travel another 650 kilometers to get there ) and the Touch ID sensor, which is responsible for fingerprint recognition. This component is not developed in China, but comes from the factory that NXP has in Europe. Therefore, it has had to make a trip of over 8,000 kilometers to meet with their peers.

It does not end there. To these elements be joined the button itself, whose production will be commissioned to a subsidiary of the Japanese firm Panasonic located more than 2,400 kilometers. This piece already includes a component known as “booster” that leads behind a journey of 965 kilometers from the American company Molex will package at its factory in Shanghai. All these iPhone parts don’t joined eache other  bind to any of the above factories. It’s Mektec, a Taiwanese company, who is in charge of that and also puts its bit by incorporating a flexible circuit handles.

The result has to travel by boat more than 2,400 kilometers to a call at a laser welding plant located in Japan, owned by the firm Sharp, who takes charge of sealing the Touch ID module. Then, fully functional and ready to be incorporated into the assembly of the iPhone, the component must travel the 2,092 kilometers that separate it from the Foxconn factory located in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. That is where some of the 128,439 employees of Apple supplier controversial finish assembling the device.

When he joined the other parts of the phone, the iPhone Home button and takes her back more than 19,300 kilometers. But there has not finished everything. Until you reach the end users, we still expect the occasional trip by land, sea and air bound for stores distributors and from there to the pockets of the fanboys.

 

Crowdsourcing for the last mile problem

Last-mile crowdsourcing consists in leaning on a group of citizens for completing the last-mile delivery of parcels in a city. This model answers the need to cope with the increased congestion in cities and the resultant problems of inefficiency and negative environmental impacts of local deliveries.

Crowdsourcing has some potential advantages that cannot be ignored. For the logistics services providers, it might lead to lower operational costs and a more environmentally responsible profile if unnecessary deliveries are avoided, or if there is evidence that more environmentally-friendly means are used (e.g. consumers using public transport, their bikes, or just walk). For the society as a whole, having the same delivery needs covered with fewer vehicles on the road would translate to a reduction of emissions and congestion in their daily lives.

Probably the most well known initiative of this kind is “Bring.BUDDY”, conceived out of a students’ project at the School of Design Thinking, Potsdam University, with DHL as the project partner. The basic idea of “Bring.BUDDY” is that people who already move across the city could carry parcels for a part of the parcels’ trip. This creates a city logistics social network composed by city dwellers transporting parcels and packages on their way to their daily destinations.

In the Bring.BUDDY initiative, each member of the network shares his itinerary through social media, an application identifies opportunities for collecting packages along his route and informs the potential transporter through his smartphone. The application also identifies transfer points, where the package is passed on to another member of the network. It is estimated that for a typical inner-city delivery, a maximum of 3 persons will be required for delivering the package. To avoid issues related to the payment of the city dwellers (i.e. creation of a micro-company with low-wage informal employees) the initiative is rewarding the participants with a number of achievement points that later one can reimburse through services (e.g. public transport tickets), purchases from local stores, or donations to charitable organisations or welfare campaigns.

 

Wal-Mart is another company thinking of last-mile crowdsourcing as a business model of potential use. In its case the concept could be realised by having customers delivering packages. Currently, deliveries from Wal-Mart stores are fulfilled either by third party courier companies or in some metropolitan areas by its own “Wal-Mart to Go” service for same day deliveries. In the crowdsourcing scenario, Wal-Mart customers sign-up to deliver packages from the Wal-Mart stores to other customers living along their way home. As a return, these customers get discounts on Wal-Mart products, effectively covering their cost of petrol. This is not seen as a solution for all company stores or products, but most probably for metropolitan areas and high-priced products.

Of course real-life implementation of last-mile crowdsourcing is not an easy task. Open issues that still remain to be resolved are the legal, insurance and security ones. Especially regarding security, everyone is comfortable with having a branded courier knocking at their door, but what about a strange supposedly neighbour? On the other hand, although it might sound a strange comparison, pizza delivery has for many years employed a mechanism with similar potential security issues due to the part-time employees used.

Nestlé Coffee – The Supply Chain

 

Today, a jar of instant coffee can be found in 93 per cent of British homes and increasingly consumers are trying out different types of coffee, such as cappuccino, espresso, mocha and latte. The expanding consumer demand for product choice, quality and value has led to an increase in the coffees being made available to a discerning public. ‘value’ is the way in which the consumer views an organisation’s product in comparison with competitive offerings. So how does coffee get from growing on a tree perhaps 1,000m up a mountainside in Africa, Asia, Central or South America, to a cup of Nescafe in your home, and in millions of homes throughout the world?

The supply chainis the sequence of activities and processes required to bring a product from its raw state to the finished goods sold to the consumer. For coffee, the chain is often complex, and varies in different countries but typically includes:

• growers – usually working on a very small plot of land of just one or two hectares. Many do some primary processing (drying or hulling) themselves
• intermediaries – intermediaries may be involved in many aspects of the supply chain. They may buy coffee at any stage between coffee cherries and green beans, they may do some of the primary processing, or they may collect together sufficient quantities of coffee from many individual farmers to transport or sell to a processor, another intermediary, or to a dealer. There may be as many as five intermediary links in the chain
• processors – individual farmers who have the equipment to process coffee, or a separate processor, or a farmers, co-operative that pools resources to buy the equipment
• government agencies – in some countries the government controls the coffee trade, perhaps by buying the coffee from processors at a fixed price and selling it in auctions for export
• exporters – they buy from co-operatives or auctions and then sell to dealers. Their expert know-ledge of the local area and producers generally enables them to guarantee the quality of the shipment
• dealers/brokers – supply the coffee beans to the roasters in the right quantities, at the right time, at a price acceptable to buyer and seller
• roasters – people like Nestlé whose expertise is to turn the green coffee beans into products people enjoy drinking. The company also adds value to the product through marketing, branding and packaging activities
• retailers – sellers of coffee products which range from large supermarkets, to hotel and catering organisations, to small independent retailers.

A supply chain is only as strong as its links. Different relationships exist between organisations involved in the separate stages of the chain – whether it is in the structuring of product distribution, arrangements for payment and arrangements for handling, or in storing the product. At the heart of these relationships is the way in which people treat each other. Long-term business relationships need to be based on honesty and fairness – parties to a trading agreement need to feel that they are getting a fair deal.

I include here a video where you can see the sustainable and global perspective that nestle plays in its supply chain adhering value in every step of their process.

 

Supply Chain in the Pharmaceutical industry.

Reading a bit about what is happening now in Venezuela and its major supply problems I encountered the critical situation in the pharmaceutical industry due to lack of inputs. This industry must maintain exemplary performance because lives depend on it.

The pharmaceutical industry is the part of the healthcare sector that deals with medications. The industry comprises different subfields pertaining to the development, production, and marketing of medications. These more or less interdependent subfields consist of drug manufacturers, drug marketers, and biotechnology companies.

The main goal of the pharmaceutical industry is to provide drugs that prevent infections, maintain health, and cure diseases. This industry directly affects the global population, so a number of international regulatory bodies monitor things like drug safety, patents, quality, and pricing.

Supply chain

The supply chain of the pharmaceutical industry is similar to that of any other industry in the manufacturing sector. However, in the US, the pharmaceutical industry has only two drug distribution channels: prescription and OTC (over-the-counter). The US Food and Drug Administration regulates both of these channels.

Here is a typical pharma industry supply chain:

Because pharmaceuticals directly affect millions of people’s health, industry manufacturers are very strict about ensuring the safety and quality of drugs at each level of the supply chain. These companies use fixed, regulator-certified suppliers of raw materials. Companies also store the raw and packaging materials in separate warehouses.

After a company processes the raw materials, it makes the final drug at the manufacturing unit. A company that has a single manufacturing unit uses only one warehouse, while a company with multiple manufacturing units stores its drugs in central and regional warehouses.

Next, distributors and super stockists receive the drugs and supply them to entities in the retail segment:

• Hospitals
• Pharmacy stores
• Health care centers
• Clinics

Then, retailers sell OTC drugs directly to consumers. A prescription drug purchase requires authorization from a qualified doctor.

If you want to read more about how this industry works, the rest of the article is here:

http://marketrealist.com/2015/01/easier-way-understand-pharma-industry/