New World Business Solutions on the technology developments that merit attention

Already, companies as varied as Toyota and Adidas are using visual systems based on game technologies to test new product designs in the fast-expanding virtual world known as Second Life. Others are using 3-D interactive technology for custom product configuration, as

Timberland is now doing with its boots. “Today's kids are used to games. When they're the ones running the supply chain, that's the way they'll want to run the business,” says Larry Lapide, research director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Center for Transportation & Logistics.

And yet many companies still rely on the simplest of technology tools. “Even midsize enterprises that operate on one ERP system still use Microsoft Excel and other applications to manage critical business data,” noted a recent report from Gartner on new ways to evaluate IT vendors.

Somewhere between the allure of a highly visual tomorrow and the technology constraints of today lies the challenge for supply chain managers who want all the advantages that their IT departments can give them. Over the past decade, they have had mixed feelings about the enterprise-wide IT systems that have seemed to consume their organisations.

They have embraced best-of-breed solutions for warehouse management, transportation management, and collaborative planning and forecasting. And they have welcomed many of the efficiencies enabled by the World Wide Web. But past is no precedent when it comes to information technology. The next decade will not simply replicate and extend the functions of today's software applications.

New IT developments coupled with big shifts in the economics of global supply chain mean that supply chain managers will have to stay in learning mode—and in some cases will have to unlearn some of what they assumed to be right about technology tools.