As an example, he cites a manufacturer of aircraft engines. Thousands and thousands of parts occupy a single engine, which are provided by hundreds of suppliers and involve multiple assembly plants.
“Imagine being able to have a dashboard that shows you where every part came from, at what point in time, the quality checks performed on that part and who provided [those] checks.”
“If you find a non-conformance—some sort of defect in a tiny widget—previously your supply-chain managers were making hundreds of phone calls trying to track down where the defect was generated,” Busiek says.
“That could take weeks of effort; meanwhile, manufacturing is at a relative standstill,” he adds. “Now, imagine being able to have a dashboard that shows you where every part came from, at what point in time, the quality checks performed on that part and who provided [those] checks.”
Instead of weeks on the phone trying to diagnose the pain point, the information is there in a couple of hours. Says Busiek, “With a mobile device, you can learn all this at any time of the day—in real time.”
In today’s breakneck speed of business, curing the pain fast is the best cure of all.