Deep Springs International (DSI) provides tools and methods to obtain or create clean drinking water.  After the earthquake in 2010, DSI deployed their people and resources throughout Haiti.  Early in March, RFID Journal reported that DSI is now using RFID NFC technology to help out.

As part of that program, DSI sends water technicians to the homes of those who use its kits, to check whether those households are utilizing them properly, and to provide additional chlorine solution, if necessary. To help it better manage its technicians and the data they generate, the organization has begun employing RFID technology—namely, Near Field Communication (NFC) passive 13.56 MHz RFID passive tags attached to buckets, as well as NFC-enabled phones to collect data and forward it to a back-end system.

RadarFind uses active RFID tags with an RTLS component to provide real-time location of both patients—not specifically Alzheimer’s patients—and equipment to improve hospital operations.  it goes without saying that losing patients or equipment is unacceptable for myriad self-evident reasons.  I look forward to learning more about how RadarFind has put this powerful technology into action.

Years later, it is exciting to see that our foresight was on point.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU), an arm of the United Nations that coordinates international postal mail services, has embarked on a project to use RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to track the speed of international deliveries. The program, using tag processing systems from Reva Systems, will begin a test phase later this month in 21 countries. The UPU expects it to be used in 100 countries by 2012.

This is an outstanding example of something I’ve talked about before.  RFID doesn’t have to be used to tag every little thing.  Sometimes the best solutions are merely on the margin.

Consider that more than 34,000 of the 5.25M people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in the United States wander out of their homes or care facilities each year (missingpatient.com).  Elopement, as it is known in the industry, is a real problem.   According to Dennis Thompson, Jr. in an article on everydayhealth.com, “fewer than four out of every 100 adults with memory impairment who wander away from home are able to return without assistance.  ‘If not found within the first 24 hours, half will experience serious injury or death.’”

We propose using an active RFID tag on patients susceptible to elopement and then an array of readers to provide RTLS and zone access/restriction.  Our analysis suggests that assisted living facilities will benefit from this type of setup in several ways.  First, we believe that they can market this product to their patients and their families and markup the equipment that they purchase from us.  This will provide an additional revenue stream.  Second, we expect this type of product will reduce their staffing needs and may reduce construction costs of facilities.  These costs would be replaced by the costs for the RFID solution, but would be passed directly onto their clients.

Also of note is the benefit conferred to the families of these patients.  Our solution includes web-based platforms which family members could log into and see the current location of the patient.  This will provide much needed peace of mind and a new way to stay engaged in the life of the patient.

Improvements are often best made on the margin.  Particularly in large, well developed organizations, much of the efficiency has already been squeezed out.  Stop looking for something to change your world over night and look for several (or many) things that will change your world just a little bit.  Consider the compass-heading analog.  If you are off course by a few degrees in the beginning, you wind up way off course the further out you go.  So goes efficiency improvements.  Small differences can manifest change dramatically over time, either by growing exponentially themselves or by turning you on to new ideas as you slowly evolve.  Agile is a great illustration of this concept.  Do something, take a snapshot and re-evaluate.  Small, incremental changes will begin to lead you in directions you never knew were possible.

Instead of one 10% improvement, consider ten 1% improvements.

Chinese networks are generally classified by:

- smaller size due to institutional stability and constrained migration

- higher density due to preference for familiar contacts

- higher trust due to institutional developmenet and comfor with third parties

By contrast, Russian networks are characterized by:

- larger size due to weak institutions and high mobility

- lower density due to comfort with loose social ties

- lower trust due to de-institutionalization and suspicion of third-parties

RFID implementation may certainly fit into this lateral component of capital budgeting.  While short-term IRR and NPV may not appear to justify enterprise-wide implementation, a longer-term ancillary-benefit assesment may lead to a different conclusion.  This is particulary true in light of the difficulty capturing accurate costs and cash flows with technology that is designed to reduce direct labor costs.   That being said, Dean cautions quite aptly: “some projects are [considered] so pivotal for the long-run welfare of the enterprise that they possess high strategic value which overrides mere economic considerations and lifts their evaluation into a mystic realm beyond the ken of economic and financial analysis.”

Throughout the capital budgeting process, I would suggest taking a bit of latitude—certainly within perspective of the current business climate—and considering those projects which may yield long-term fruition of organizational objectives.

“Scientists and those people with religious convictions may have sharply contrasting beliefs, says Robert P Crease, but does that forbid them from having stimulating conversation?”

It’s an interesting article that goes on…

…both groups have to trust something intangible: the scientific life and the religious life, respectively. For at the core, if sometimes not the surface, of science and religion is a kind of humility. For scientists, it is the awareness that we do not know enough about the natural world; we know only fragments, and not all that we can. For the religious — and especially for Christians, Jews and Muslims — the humility lies in the awareness that the way we humans ordinarily lead our lives is imperfect; that we are not all that we can be. The idea that the truly religious life is marked by humility and the awareness of one’s own ignorance is hardly controversial, and is the thesis of the New York University theologian James P Carse’s new book The Religious Case Against Belief.

And concludes…

Trust, then, is one issue about which both scientists and the religious have a backlog of experiences that might be mutually illuminating. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we got them talking, not about their beliefs, but about how they form and defend those beliefs. That would be a conversation worth overhearing.

I e-mailed Alex Todd with TrustEnablement.com and asked for his thoughts.  Based on his research and theories, he had this to say…

That’s an interesting article.  I agree with the thesis that trust underpins both science and religion.  The fundamental difference is their preferred sources of trust.  Humility is a risk transference mechanism that manifests itself as deference, which in my Trust Enablement(r) Framework serves to rebuild lost or deficient trust.  It is the most efficient starting point for developing trust that, when it works, stimulates a virtuous spiral of mutual reciprocity, resulting in increasing levels of trust.

by Alan Briggs

I tend to agree.  If you look at some of the world’s longest-running, most-profitable organizations, they each have a strong commitment to honesty and integrity.  Businesses cannot succeed if their employees lack trust in their management, if their customers lack trust in the organization or if their investors lack trust in the business model.

From a supply chain standpoint, companies would do better to realize that their customers rely on the commitments that are made.  If obligations are not met and commitments are routinely broken, the supply chain customers will not be able to make good on the commitments they have made to their own customers.  If you take the partnership approach, if you believe that you as a supplychain provider are working in tandem with your customer toward the ultimate goal of serving their customer, you must realize that the commitments you make to your customer are as important as the commitments they make to theirs.