Manufacturing companies all have logistics problems. These days,
             those are most often fixed through a combination of recognizing where the
             logjams are located, and applying a generally high-tech solution. The ten
             companies profiled below all demonstrate this combination.
             RCA/Thomson Consumer Electronics
             RCA is a well-known name in consumer electronics, and particularly
             televisions from palm-sized to room-size, plus other audio-video equipment.
             Its Bloomington, Indiana, its Thomson Consumer Electronics plant ships
             about 500,000 orders each year (15,000 products a day rolling off assembly
             lines at Bloomington), but it does so with a patchwork of 25 separate
             freight carriers globally (15 in the U.S.), which could be a logistics
             nightmare; while it is preferable to push down shipping logistics to a
             carrier (as many companies do with UPS, using not only their freight
             service but their shipment tracking, etc.), RCA was manually entering bills
             of lading for every shipment. In a highly competitive market, it was
             imperative that orders reach retailers in a timely manner in order not to
             lose market share. Each bill-of-lading contains important product and
             shipment information such as product quantity and serial numbers, purchase
             order numbers and destination addresses that accompany the order as it
             travels from Thomson through the carriers' network of hub and spoke
             distribution facilities to the end-destination consignees. Not only were
             these manually key-punched before the order left the loading dock; they
             were manually key-punched at every stop in the shipping company's hub-and-
             spoke distribution network. [1]
             This process was both time-consuming and prone to errors. Even the
             best keypunch operator's average five errors per hundred, resulting in
             orders misplaced, delayed, or shipped to the wrong location. Each error
             costs about $100 dollars in customize service time, re-keypunching,
             retrievin...