Managing Software: Are you ready for real-time information?
The challenge lies in discerning the points of information that will make a difference from the trivial points.
Today you would be hard pressed to find a keypunch operator in a food company. In addition, we are moving away from batch processing as fast as we can. Technology vendors can now deliver on their real-time promises. Financial packages have a close at the end of each business day and deliver a daily profit and loss report to management. On the production line, the systems monitor and control processes and provide a steady, unrelenting stream of data to operators and plant managers. In the warehouse we are on the cusp of a revolution through RFID technology that will instantly broadcast all the movement of inventories to ubiquitous sensors that will tell how things have changed, in real time. Real-time systems will send text messages to cell phone-enabled PDAs as pallets move from a loading dock to the nose of a truck.