At four Minnesota stores, a major U.S. automotive battery supplier has added radio frequency identification technology to storage racks, making it possible for the company to view the locations of its products and replenish stock at the appropriate times, thereby enabling it to provide improved services to its distributors, dealers and retailers.

Intelleflex, a provider of on-demand data visibility solutions for supply chains and asset tracking, has rolled out the Intelleflex CMR-6100, a fully integrated cellular-enabled, GPS-equipped, multi-protocol RFID reader with support for the ISO Class 3 battery-assisted passive and EPCglobal C1G2 passive standards. Intelleflex ZEST Data Services, a cloud-based repository for aggregating, warehousing and sharing information across the supply chain, facilitates on-demand access to actionable data for improved supply chain operations to provide a complete picture of data spanning the entire supply chain.

From sourcing to delivery, the supply chain is now the most horizontal function in the enterprise, says Tony Pittman, director of global procurement at HP. And any role that has such wide-ranging impact, from how money is spent to affecting the customer's experience, needs highly trained managers and workers.