Technology Marriages — They Take Work
I was just going through my notes and found I had made an entry about this product and company back in June … somehow it never seemed to get written up. Better late than never, since it complements my last story’s subject very well, business keeping track of their assets.
The GPS and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) market spaces are quite confused and often overlap … certainly within the minds of the potential business user.
This, to my mind, is one of the most significant challenges in eithe rof these market ’spaces”. the technolgy already exists to produces remarkable ROI (Return On Investment) for clients. but many businesses are reluctant to take the first step becuase they just don’t undersatnd what they might be getting into and prefer to remain on the sideliens.
Conventional RFID systems are extermely useful for “logging” assets passing gateways or check pints. Count the assest into a warehouse, for example. log then nto a contianer for shipment at the loading dock … works great except there is no visibility of the product being tracked in between the gateway points.
Conventional GPS tracking systems work great at providing visbility in transit. Very easy to see how tracking the positon of the truck on a near-reaol time basis can be sueful for security as well as many othert business planning tasks. But it’s certainly a ‘reach’ to think of GPS tracking thousnds and thousands of cartons of high-vakue merchandise aroundf the wrold … the logistics of the tracking effort are daunting.
This little package is one of agrowing number of “technology marriage” debices that will make the pieces of the puzzle fit better into place.
It’s samll enough, cheap enough and self-poered so it is perfectly suited for the tradional RFID “license plate” package tracking role. It will do all the standatd warhousing type fiunctions regarding logging inventory in and out of “gateways” or check points.
But insread of ignoring the “othe half”, it harmonizes with GPS tracking technology and gives useful location data within a signifcant range … or the order of haslf a kilometer or so.
With devices such as this it’s perfectly possible to find a specic shipment easily with a large storage area or design a system that logs all parts of a high-vaule shipment onto a single truck and then alerts, though the truck’s ‘whole ehcile” long-distance GPS tracking system when any part of the shipment goes missing … when and where it hapens, not when the truck gets to the distant end and the unloaders find the package count is wrong. Interetsing company for anyone wanting to move their logistics management into the 21st centiry … Identec Solutions