Have big box stores learned lessons that can be applied by electronics manufacturers?

One of the big takeaways from the Future Compute conference on the campus of MIT in May was a definitive “yes!”

There, we heard about how some of the large retail chains like Target use software, hardware and data in all kinds of customer experiences.

Almost every employee has handheld devices tracking the billions of sensors and cameras in use across some 1,900 stores and 50 regional distribution centers. At each store, it runs about 100 different software applications. They look at traffic trends: When is the peak? When is the lag? And how can they be modulated?

Now consider an electronics manufacturing operation. There could be hundreds of operators, thousands of PCBs, millions of components, billions of solder joints, each one needing traceability.