Are Web services the future of supply chain computing?

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/22/2005

Two new concepts are beginning to enter the IT lexicon: Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture.

Both represent new ways for companies to integrate the business software applications they use to manage their front office and back office operations, especially with trading partners.

That’s why several leading warehouse management (WMS), manufacturing execution (MES) and transportation management (TMS) vendors are in the process of rewriting their solutions to play in this emerging space. So just what are these new concepts?

Web Services are applications with business or process functionality that are accessible over the Internet. They can stand on their own, like a WMS that has been rewritten as a Web Service. Or, they can be linked together with other applications to create a new application and manage a process.

The best example in the supply chain might be linking together order management (OMS), warehouse management (WMS) and transportation management (TMS) systems to get seamless visibility across an order fulfillment process. This could happen even if the OMS is at an outsourced call center, the WMS is at a third-party logistics provider, and the TMS is in your own department.

“This enables you to extend the processes across multiple applications, whether you own the application or the application resides with one of your trading partners, like a contract manufacturer or third-party logistics provider,” says Sean Rollings, senior director of marketing, NetSuite (650-627-1000). “The idea is to be able to manage the flow of a transaction across systems.”

Services Oriented Architecture, on the other hand, provides the standards and infrastructure needed to connect Web Services using the Internet as the backbone for that communication.

“In the past, there’s been no standard interface for integrating two applications or integrating two trading partners,” says Bob Mick, vice president of emerging technologies at ARC Advisory Group (781-471-1000, www.arcweb.com). Services Oriented Architecture changes all that.”

Not only do Web Services and Services Oriented Architecture provide better integration, but also now applications can talk directly to one another to request the data they need. They also can be accessed over any Web-enabled device, including PDA’s, BlackBerrys and cell phones, and not just through a PC with a Web browser.

How might all of this play out in the supply chain? Steve Banker, service director, supply chain management, ARC, cites one example.“If you’re manufacturing off shore, you might use Web Services to create a visibility solution that can use bar codes to track an order in the plant; RFID to update information at the port; GPS to track the container on the ship; an active RFID tag to speed the container through customs; and passive RFID to get visibility into the cartons nested on pallets in the container when it arrives at your warehouse.”

The type of solution Banker just described would bring together manufacturing, warehousing and transportation solutions as well as RFID, bar codes, sensors and GPS solutions for visibility. They would be knitted together by another Web Services application that can sift through the data to provide different views into the enterprise depending on the roles and task of the user.

“We might be five or ten years away,” says Banker, “but this is where we’re going.”