Using IoT asset tracking solutions has enabled Michelin to decrease transit stocks by 10 percent, increase estimated time of arrival accuracy by 40 percent and reduce out of stock situations due to exceptional causes, such as bad weather, by a factor of 4.
Today, business success is rooted in uninterrupted supply chain flow but supply chain managers can be almost blind to whole segments of the physical transportation, reducing planning accuracy and agility while increasing lead times. However, across all industries, digital technologies are fundamentally changing how logistics works. The Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and especially geolocation technologies are dramatically boosting the transparency of supply chain operations – for suppliers, manufacturers, and end customers. These solutions make it possible for companies to constantly evaluate and optimize their supply chains, drawing on a wealth of data from many connected devices, companies can now expect instant visibility of routes taken, expected delays, compromised load, helping them address supply chain inefficiencies or even eradicate them altogether.
In the 1950’s Malcom McLean created the modern container as we know it - standardizing shipments of 20 and 40 foot sizes to be utilized in all trucks, ships and ports globally and revolutionizing the shipping industry. Now, driven by popular IoT protocols LPWA and 5G, the IoT Asset Tracking Revolution is here. Cisco and DHL estimate that IoT asset tracking solutions could create $1.9 trillion in economic value for the global supply chain and logistics sector. Containers are now equipped with an efficient tracking device that can consistently send sensor telemetry data to a command and control center for monitoring and analysis. New geolocation solutions are using network services based on low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks and 5G protocol, which fits perfectly with container’s tracking needs and improving deficiencies and shortcomings associated with the past cellular 4G technology GSM based solution. LPWA/5G IoT devices are more energy efficient, and low battery consumption for long battery life allows months of uninterrupted transmission, with global network coverage able to meet international business needs. This enables moving containers, pallets, RTI, ULD, and trailers equipped with IoT trackers to transmit their data all over the world – a real game changer. LPWA/5G offers very low communication latency and support communication between devices - autonomous vehicles use this ability for inter-communication with other autonomous vehicles for safety and precaution. Similar types of inter-communication can occur between containers to avoid hazardous conditions and delays. Logistics companies can now augment existing RFID or Bluetooth technologies that monitor goods in the warehouse, and continue tracking after exiting past the factory gate with the ability to react to any unexpected change of plans.
As expected, early adopters of container tracking devices are those customers who see the most benefit. These customers are focused on ensuring quality of shipments that require strict conditions so that goods do not spoil for instance:
- Food industry - temperature sensitive meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables
- Pharmaceutical - temperature sensitive medication and vaccinations
- Tobacco and wines - that require humidity and temperature restrictions
Refrigerated (“Reefer”) containers are, simply put, large temperature-sensitive fridges that maintain the cargo at the required temperature (usually between -30°C and +30°C) for the duration of the journey either in chilled, frozen or controlled temperature. For these shipments, any disruption of energy supply to these containers may be detrimental and cause total loss of goods. To avoid total loss of goods, sensor tracking is necessary and in these events can warrant timely intervention to prevent the loss.
Adoption of container tracking also extends to high value products focusing on theft prevention like:
- Electronics
- Automotive parts
- Cosmetics
- Clothing and shoes
In today’s black and grey markets, some stolen goods are as good as cash, for example - tobacco and cosmetics. Authentic items which are marked down to make them attractive and irresistible to consumers can be easily sold off by criminals making them a good target for theft by organized crime who often control longshoremen unions at the ports.
Today, criminals are more sophisticated and diligent than ever, utilizing various internal information sources to identify the contents of cargo loads before attempting a theft. Although full trailer theft is more profitable, logistics make targeted merchandise theft valuable enough that a few cases or pallets are worth the risk. Organized thieves are utilizing a risk/reward calculation when targeting cargo theft focusing their efforts on risk reduction while prospecting for high profits from valuable but smaller quantity items. Oftentimes the loss on these loads deemed relatively too low to trigger a police report or insurance claim, which plays to the hands of the criminals allowing them to operate in obscurity and repeat such schemes. Several cases or pallets of easily swiped, targeted merchandise, provide enough return value for a thief with little retribution while a riskier, albeit more profitable, full trailer theft of such products requires complicated logistics from, failure and/or capture to marketing of large stolen goods.
To ensure better reliability and security of transported goods, advanced container tracking and monitoring systems can assist and solve many of these issues.
How to take advantage of LPWA/5G IoT asset tracking and monitoring systems?
Quality-related incidents can be avoided by identifying problematic patterns and preempting them. Advanced systems can automatically learn incidental patterns along the shipping and transportation route, We can unearth and map out quality/security-related vulnerabilities, provide alerts in real time, and be a step ahead of the next possibly compromised shipment. For example, applying a pattern detection algorithm can result in identifying a particular ship or its captain that tends to unplug containers from an electric source in order to save time during port haul so that unloading can occur quicker, but not accounting for hauling delays due to port traffic, compromising temperature sensitive goods due to extended electricity shut off time. The solution to this is an advanced container tracking and monitoring system that can identify this pattern of behaviour, and correlate them to other sensor related anomalies in a multi-dimensional computation and can identify the culmination of events that cause quality-related compromise. Once this is identified, an alert is raised by the system and the ship can be contacted to stop the potential loss, saving the entire container.
Crime incidents, as with all crime prevention methodologies, require one to be a step ahead of the criminals by combining as much information to understand illicit behavioral patterns, to be able to predict and prevent them and offer deterrents. By gathering information relating to the locations of crime related areas, combined with sensor and location based behavioral anomalies associated with the container and/or the truck driver, patterns of crime incidents can be detected and avoided. For example, some product types have very strong location specific trends. During 2019 cosmetics products recorded more thefts in specific areas in Veracruz Mexico than any other state and accounted for 32% of reported cosmetics thefts nationwide for customers of bLine Analytics. In addition this was the top product type within Veracruz, accounting for 25% of the state’s reported theft. A container tracking and monitoring system will provide necessary driving guidelines to avoid such areas and alert on any route deviation that brings containers transporting cosmetics in proximity to these hot zone areas. In addition any abnormal stop in this area can warrant real-time intervention.
The world is entering a new era in logistics; one where it is possible to oversee the complete supply chain in real time by IoT tracking containers, pallets, trailers, and trucks anywhere, anytime.