But then broken machines started pouring back to suppliers, leading to the infamous Red Ring of Death scandal.
"We're not having to go back to suppliers all the time saying, 'Can you add a new field in here?' or, 'Can you change the workflow?' we can actually do that ourselves.
American foods company ConAgra announced this month that by December 2015 it will only source palm oil that can be traced back to "suppliers independently verified as not developing on high carbon stock or high conservation value forests, peatlands, or engaged in human rights abuses".
Every order will ripple back to suppliers, who will automatically replenish the relevant parts.
The dealer's software is closely linked with BMW's manufacturing and procurement system, so special orders automatically ripple back to suppliers, ensuring the right parts are delivered at the right time.
It gets that data for free, and can then sell it back to suppliers, giving them real-time information that can be used for understanding their customers to help increase sales.
"At the feed mill the ingredients can been traced back to the supplier, the supplier holds records tracing them back to point of production, so everything is traceable almost back to the field at which it was produced".
In this paper, however, the defective items are stored in the warehouse until the next delivery is received and then are returned back to the supplier via the supplier's vehicle.
And you can say goodbye to estimated bills and meter readings – smart meters automatically send readings back to your supplier.
British Gas has already installed more than a million of its own smart meters, which automatically send gas and electricity usage readings back to the supplier.
This means that any invoice emailed to Vestas is automatically converted via OCR and bounced back to the supplier to validate it.
