Phil Bowman

Wireless technology has changed the very bedrock of effective production and supply management. Managers and staff can now easily monitor where a product is, where it came from, when it left the warehouse, and when it will get to the supplier, not to mention how much it cost to make it! One of the most memorable images from Fritz Lang's classic silent movie, "Metropolis," is the scene in which a factory worker must constantly match up pointers with flashing lights until, exhausted, he collapses on the floor and is replaced by another worker. Back in the 1920s this image was both science fiction and a ringing social statement. Flashing forward nearly 80 years, the task of reading dials, recording information, and relaying it to appropriate sources in a timely manner can still be a grueling task in our high-tech era. With today's high-speed production processes it is ... (more)