Containers, stillages, trailers or reusable transport packaging — non-powered assets such as these play a central role in smooth supply chains and logistics processes. For a long time, however, non-powered assets could hardly be digitized due to a lack of sufficient battery life, thus eluding efficient management.

To plan and control logistical processes and supply chains, companies usually needed a large buffer/reserve stock and sometimes a lot of telephone/administrative work to determine the exact location and condition of such assets. Thanks to power-saving Internet of Things and wireless technology paired with high-performance sensors for environmental conditions and intelligent firmware, sufficiently robust trackers are now available for efficient use in the mass market.

Figure 1: Integrated modeling tools help to model and track the flow of assets across operations and locations.

The basics: Thousands of tracker data at a glance

In order for companies to derive real benefits for their business from pure tracking, they need a management platform that can do more than display the trackers on a map. Depending on the requirements, tracking hardware can be equipped with sensors for temperature, humidity or tipping movements, for example.

A management platform must then ensure that the multitude of trackers can be efficiently commissioned and administered and that their collected data is made available for use. After all, large amounts of data are only valuable if important insights can be gained quickly and intuitively. The tracking application, therefore, needs powerful search and filter functions and visually meaningful maps, dashboards and panels.

Integration into existing systems

However, for the data collected via tracking to fully benefit the company’s supply chains and logistics processes, it needs to be integrated into the company’s existing IT systems, such as ERP systems or tools for data analysis and business intelligence.

The data exchanges between the business applications can be useful in both directions: on the one hand, precise localization and sensor data from the tracking platform enrich reliable enterprise resource planning via the ERP system; on the other hand, it can be helpful to make data from the ERP system available to the tracker management platform ­— for example, to evaluate the utilization of a trailer or to simply display the contents of a container via a mobile app on-site.

Technically, such data exchange can be realized through open APIs (application programming interfaces), which such a management platform should have. This enables the professional implementation of system integrations that are needed in the business IT of many companies — for example with SAP, Microsoft Azure or AWS.

Designing/modeling process flows and making route patterns transparent

In order for companies to make their own processes around tracked assets transparent, a management platform needs tools that can be used to model and track the flow of assets across the different processes and, if applicable, locations (see Figure 1). Also important for this is the ability to define specific geographic areas of interest. Such geo-zones can then be used for inventory management, flow analysis or alerts. The mapping of load carriers or other assets to companies’ logistical processes and supply chains provides an accurate overview of how individual assets move from location to location, where they stop and for how long.

Based on the collected data, route patterns and travel times can be identified, rotation statistics with average and outlier analyses can be created (see Figure 2), and finally, planning and forecasts can be adjusted based on measured historical data. For appropriate visualization and evaluation, the tracking platform should provide the appropriate tools. This way, statistics can be generated for thousands of assets and/or an entire fleet, which can serve as a basis for further process optimization.

Figure 2: With a high-performance tracker management system, route patterns and travel times can be detected, and rotation statistics can be generated so that averages and anomalies can be identified.

Airbus example

Airbus develops, manufactures and delivers aerospace products, services and solutions worldwide, with more than 50,000 dedicated returnable transport packages circulating between sites and subcontractors. Thousands of returnable transport packages have been equipped with trackers and managed via a cloud-based platform over the past years. Airbus therefore benefits today from complete transparency. Inventory runs automatically, and stocks can be easily retrieved with their locations. The rotation capability of the packages has been improved, while their storage times and the circulating stocks have been reduced. Fleet capacity can also now be optimized, spare parts costs saved and subcontractor compliance better monitored.

The advantages at a glance

• Precise inventory…