How cool is that

Heineken is refreshing its supply chain to ensure its beer doesn't reach parts it shouldn't.

Heineken is to trial a tracking system which will tell it exactly where its beer shipments are, even in the middle of the Atlantic. The brewer has deployed the solution to track ten containers full of beer travelling from the UK and the Netherlands to its distribution centre in the US. The project, which it calls "The Beer Living Lab", uses triangulation techniques of both satellites and cellular base stations to locate exactly where the cargo is. The SOA-based architecture will also allow the creation of distributed data sources, rather than Heineken having to run a large central database.