By now, most logistics and supply chain professionals have heard the word “nanotechnology” bandied about in a number of different contexts. The question then arises, how many of us really know what “nanotechnology” means and more importantly what impacts it may ultimately have on our companies and our profession?
As straight forward thinkers, people in supply chain logistics prefer simple, easy to understand answers and at the detail level, nanotechnology is anything but. So let’s cut through all the investment hype and scientific bafflegab to first develop a basic understanding and then review a number of potential impacts the growth and expansion of nanotech may have.
In layman’s terms, nanotechnology is… ” the precision placement, measurement, manipulation and modeling of sub-100 nanometer scale matter. ” In other words nanotech is about building really small things. So just how small are we talking here? Suffice it to say that a human hair is approximately 50,000 nanometers wide, and nano manufacturing is carried out on a scale 500 times smaller than that. Just sit back and think about that basic fact for a minute as we now begin to review the short, medium and long term impacts this emerging technology may generate.
From observing the growth and development of the nanotechnology revolution over the last couple of years, when nanotechnology first became part of the About Logistics/Supply Chain site at www.logistics.about.com , I’ve developed some opinions on what the potential ramifications will be.
Probably the most immediate impact we are likely to see is in the realm of Automatic Identification where nanotechnology is already being applied by a number of companies to develop new RFID chips and antenna arrays that are even smaller and lower cost to manufacture as an alternative to the traditional RFID technologies.
All those who’ve been following the RFID revolution know that the widespread application usage opportunity and benefits are huge, and the question has now become more one of when, not if widespread rollout will occur. Privacy aside, the major outstanding issue is how to get down to the item level with the remaining two big hurdles being, the cost of RFID chips to mark each item, and enough production capacity to make the billions of chips that will be needed annually. Nanotechnology holds promise as the potential solution to both of these RFID rollout dilemmas.
So if RFID is one potential application of nanotechnology, what are some of the medium term potential impacts of this scientific manufacturing breakthrough? Well two of the most significant costs in any logistics and supply chain operation are warehousing and transportation. The relative costs of these functions are directly proportional to the size and amount of products requiring storage and transport in any given supply chain.
Nanotechnology’s medium term impact is likely to be a dramatic reduction in the size of many products through utilization of nano-components instead of current componentry. For those of you doubtful of this, just think back to when transistor technology replaced old tube technology allowing radios that were large floor model devices to rapidly become portable palm size devices. Putting this in a nanotechnology context, the potential is to pack all the computing power of one of today’s PCs into a series of nano-chips. As items become smaller and smaller, the need for warehousing and transportation will also decrease in a proportional manner.
As you can see from these above potential nanotech uses, there are some conventional applications that are already on the short and medium term horizons, but what about the future uses of this revolutionary methodology? This is where things start to become really interesting and even somewhat alarming from the conventional supply chain logistics perspective.
As stated in the original definition, nanotechnology is the precision placement, measurement, manipulation and modeling of sub-100 nanometer scale matter.
What this literally means is that we can begin to manipulate molecules. This is something that’s gone beyond the theoretical and has already been done with individual molecules being manipulated in one case to spell IBM. As these methods continue to improve, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that current manufacturing methods could be turned on their collective heads.
Currently manufacturing is done through either cutting away or moulding various materials to create a finished product and at the same time creating waste. What if using molecular manipulation, just the molecules required could be assembled directly into the finished product? Those of you familiar with the old Star Trek episodes will of course recall “The Replicator” unit which performed this type of a manufacturing function.
Another form of molecular manipulation which is also advancing is teleportation and researchers have already successfully teleported a photon, with again a potential future resulting innovation being the beaming of finished products from place to place. This brings to mind another original Star Trek stand-by, “The Transporter” of the “Beam me up Scotty!” variety.
These technologies will of course not be available tomorrow, but for the younger of us, perhaps at some point in our lifetime. The introduction and utilization of either or both of these technologies in combination would obviously have dramatic and disruptive impacts on current logistics and supply chain costs, methods, equipment and infrastructure.
Such equipment will no doubt be incredibly complex and expensive, so the next time someone springs the nanotechnology word on you can calmly reply that you know what it is and you’ve already got it covered with a 1000% increase in your budget for Materials Handling Capital expenditures in the year 2020.
Jeff Ashcroft