Increasing Demands on a Secured and Efficient Logistics Services
With the growing popularity of online shopping, individuals tend to purchase various products from the Internet. Small stuffs like electronic devices, clothes, daily supplies, or large equipment like furniture, home appliances, and even foods and medicines are all available online. Sourcing from the Internet is informative and time-efficient. However, most of the competitive suppliers are located in different regions from the buyers themselves, which results in a long journey and time to deliver the commodities. To make things worse, long-distance transportation is often accompanied by high risks.
Conventional asset tracking methods mostly rely on barcode systems or manual inventory. These operations have the fatal shortcomings of not being able to track the commodities in real-time; and because most operations require manual interventions, errors and losses of commodities are prone to occur during the logistics process. For transportations of drugs or foods that have high requirements on temperature and humidity control, the typical situations where goods deteriorate and become unusable due to the lack of a monitor system are reoccurring all the time. Thus, effective fleet management and asset tracking are particularly important in avoiding damages and losses of commodities as well as guaranteeing the time of delivery.
IoT Enables a More Powerful Asset Tracking System
The Internet of Things enables intelligent and connected asset tracking, which effectively enhances fleet management and ensures the safety as well as quality of commodities. It makes logistics information transparent, allowing logistic companies, senders and recipients to better monitor the logistics process.
Share Real-Time Positioning
The IoT asset tracking applications arecommonly found in IoT trackers. To take land transportation as an example, with the help of GNSS features, the trackers installed on trucks can support real-time precise positioning. Unlike traditional methods where logistics information updates can only be done manually or uploaded through the barcode system after reaching logistics centers, the smart IoT tracker enables the truck to simultaneously synchronize its location information to the cloud and share with logistic companies, senders, and recipients along its way to the destination.The three parties can clearly understand the route and the latest progress, instead of only the driver having such information.
Avoid Losses from Thefts
Smart IoT trackers are also efficient in preventing loss caused by thefts. If unfortunately, thefts occur, the driver can send an alert to the logistics company using the connected tracker, and the latter can immediately notify the police with a precise location. In this way,the truck can be quickly and accurately located. By understanding where the commodities last disappeared, the police can narrow the search scope and shorten the search time, which will increase the chances of retrieval.
Maintain a Qualified Storage Environment|
When transporting drugs or foods which demand strict environmental control, IoT temperature and humidity sensors can be installed in the cabinet to monitor real-time parameters and make sure the condition of the cabinet meets the storage requirement. Although many trucks are now equipped with automatic temperature and humidity control systems, there are still many system failures that ultimately lead to deterioration of commodities. But with the intelligent IoT sensors, automatic alerts will be sent to the driver when indicators are below requirement. Drivers can constantly monitor the cabinet environment without stopping the truck and checking.
Cat 1 – An Ideal IoT Solution for Asset Tracking
The Internet of Things enables intelligent asset tracking, simplifying the monitoring process while improving the overall efficiency and safety of logistics. Although IoT asset tracking systems have presented plenty of advantages, yet, lots of organizations that have deployed M2M tracking solutions have experienced connectivity problems. Fibocom’s LTE Cat 1 modules are ideal wireless communication solution for the scenario of asset tracking. As 2G and 3G are about to be phased out, Cat1 technology defeat other new communication technologies with its reliable connectivity and low cost. Unlike LPWAN that is more suitable for static scenarios, Cat 1 can provide fast and stable wireless connections even in a fast-moving scene, allowing real-time positioning without lag. In terms of application costs, CAT1 is much more economical than the LTE Cat 4, which is also 4G technology. Inaddition, as a type of LTE network, Cat 1 technology can be directly deployed based on the existing 4G network infrastructure without additional network construction required.
Fibocom’s Cat 1 Module L610 supports LTE,GSM dual-mode communication, VoLTE, audio, camera, LCD, keypad, and other functions. Formed as both LCC+LGA and MiniPCIe packages, it provides universal interfaces such as USB / UART / SPI / I2C / SDIO to meet various application demands of the IoT industry. The product positioning covers the Internet of things market with medium and low rates, such as pan payment, sharing,industrial interconnection, tracking, vehicle after loading and other application scenarios. Provide perfect high-speed experience for customers in the above fields.