Amazing Digital Capabilities in Brazil

Call me a technophile or just someone interested in free markets, but either way, the following anecdote shows some of the innovations going on in our world today. In a recent phone conversation with a dealer/reseller of Wi-Fi Broadband products in Brazil, he described one of his solutions:

For the second largest container/shipping company in the world it is imperative to have maximum efficiency in the handling (loading and unloading) of containers that carry the world's commerce inside gigantic, seagoing ships. To do this the old-fashioned way, the company has to have on-board staff (humans) that tell the crane operator where a particular container is, how it's stacked, and in what order (two levels down, etc.). Using two-way radios this can be done, albeit with some delays as the human staffer has to make his way through the ship to identify and locate a particular container (with its unique ID number).

By using Wi-Fi technology that is linked to each container, the crane operators can easily identify the container, know whether it's vertically or horizontally positioned and find out other important details for loading or unloading. With the cost of labor reduced and the rate of efficiency increased, these shipping operations can move at maximum rates, minimizing the time and cost of having these behemoths of the seas in port any longer than necessary.

This, like many other examples from Brazil (voting on-line, paying taxes on-line, etc.), shows a country that is in the vanguard of technology usage to sustain its amazing rates of growth, its incredible (positive) balance of trade and other leading indicators throughout their economy. What do you think? Do you have an anecdote from domestic or international shores about amazing digital capabilities?

Thanks for reading, and pass it along!

© Daniel A. Cabrera, TopExec.org, All rights reserved, 2008