As he recognized that the success of supply chain was increasingly dependent on system integration, data integrity, and other key aspects typically run by the IT department, he determined that tight integration between IT and supply chain was a must.

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"We are now starting to work on the integration of this data fusion system into a mobile telephone, " said researcher Enrique Marti.

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Cascalog uses the capabilities for data processing created by the Cascading system, which has APIs for scheduling, processing, and integration.

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But Mr Lee and his colleagues are already concentrating on the ultimate prize of supply-chain integration: ways of constantly monitoring and improving the whole system by using all the available data.

ECONOMIST: Chain reaction