IoT News, Publications, Magazine & Newsletter | IoT Now

One-to-one connectivity between vehicles, drivers and the office via cellular and satellite networks has been made a reality by the Internet of Things. Here, Craig Montgomery explains how tracking and management technology has enabled fleets to become more efficient and fight back against mounting cost pressures.

In Anytown, USA, big construction equipment roars to life as the sun starts to rise. Attached to all of the powerful earthmovers, dump trucks, cranes and other expensive equipment building the new housing development – including a new school and all other accoutrements of modern day suburban life — is a small device collecting critical telematics and engine diagnostic information.

A central command centre, miles away, is using the information to monitor its fleet and quickly respond to engine fault codes. The construction project will proceed without a hitch. Picket fences will go up, and block parties will go on as planned with the power of the Internet of Things and GPS tracking.

Across town is an 18 wheeler approaching a supermarket with a load of double chocolate ice cream. Somewhere else, perhaps states away, is an office employee monitoring the internal temperature of the trailer to ensure the frozen goods will arrive perfectly. It’s no coincidence that the double chocolate ice cream will taste just as buyers expect, every time.

Further away, along the coast, is a large freighter ship making its way into port carrying, among other things, sheet metal and other materials destined for a manufacturing plant in Anytown. A unique Automatic Identification System (AIS) has been continually monitoring the vessel’s location and status well beyond the coastal region to assist with navigation and to improve maritime safety.

As the ship glides into port, managers at the local manufacturing plant breathe a sigh of relief. They can keep their shifts working, their supply lines healthy and their customers happy. Again, it all happens because of the power of the Internet of Things and GPS tracking.

Across the world, a delivery of fuel crosses the border of Pakistan into Afghanistan to supply the US military. A sophisticated tracking and fuel sensor device assures the fuel is not tampered with as a local contractor makes the delivery through the winding canyon roads that lead to Torkham, Afghanistan.

A troop of Marines from Anytown, and the nation at large, depend on the successful delivery of fuel to keep the Humvees ahead of the bad guys. The soldiers will stay safe as the war rages on because of the Internet of Things and GPS tracking.

The Internet of Things represents the evolution of one-to-one connectivity between vehicles, drivers and the office via cellular and satellite networks. Vehicles today are inundated with devices and sensors to capture critical, real-time information about assets, drivers and cargo. This information is sent in an integrated fashion to the right people at the right time to make the right decisions.

For all of this to happen, cellular and satellite communication platforms have had to come a long way in terms of power, bandwidth and coverage. Tracking devices have also had to become more compact and ruggedised.

Altogether, the amount of data that can be streamed to the office or literally any mobile device with an internet connection is stunning. The capabilities and options for deploying technology are immense. Functions that were unheard of only a few years ago, like changing the temperature settings of a refrigerated trailer or locking and unlocking trailer doors from a smartphone, are now expected.

Fleet and asset tracking is everywhere. Without it, companies like Amazon would have fallen by the wayside with ecommerce still being more of a promise than a booming, worldwide industry.

As e-commerce has grown significantly over the past 15 years, radical changes have been made to the delivery model for goods. Products must ship to consumers’ homes within days not weeks, making regional distribution hubs the only option to meet two and three-day delivery schedules. E-commerce has also spurred greater demand for transparency and dependability of status and arrival times.

Without fleet tracking technology, e-commerce would have sputtered for much longer and may never have achieved the efficiency and reliability levels to justify the business models and big bets made at the time by visionaries like Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.

Fleets have also had to become more efficient to fight back against mounting cost pressures. For example, without trailer tracking, fleets had to have slack capacity – more trailers – to deal with the lack of visibility and potential unpredictability of demand. That meant more capital expenditures, more maintenance and thus higher operating costs.

Technologies like route optimisation in the cabs of trucks have helped dispatch operations effectively and efficiently adjust to changing conditions and variability of driver behavior, resulting in lower fuel costs and higher revenues. Higher costs would have pushed the delivered cost of goods beyond the convenience factor of driving to the store – which was the initial business model of e-commerce — to get what you want at a lower total delivered cost with no taxes.

The real-time demand of goods has created new supply chain models. Inventory patterns evolved, and inventory turns dramatically increased. Warehouse cross-docking and long haul to short haul trucking transfers became critical.

Distribution centre designs changed forever as have retail stores. Omni-channel fulfillment is the new buzzword in retail and represents the blurring of the line between the distribution centre and the retail store. Selling and fulfilling have become synonymous with stores taking on more tasks traditionally reserved for the data centre.

To create a seamless experience for customers, stores are being asked to perform new processes traditionally reserved for the warehouse. To not lose out on a sale, stores let customers buy online and pickup in the store or buy at the store and have product shipped directly to their home. Omnichannel fulfillment has put real-time visibility to inventory in the supply chain in the hands of a floor salesperson or cashier.

Less-than-truckload delivery operations have become a key element in regional hub and spoke designs to ensure quick fulfillment from distribution centres. Long haul trucking has also had to become faster and more efficient to keep distribution centres and retail stores supplied with goods to avoid lost sales. The evolution of fleet and asset tracking technology has helped to enable all of this.

For the past 14 years, ORBCOMM has been part of this tracking evolution. We were monitoring assets across the globe when they still called it the world wide web. We were connecting business to assets and their location before the term Internet of Things was coined. Our technology can be found on the oceans, railways, roads and construction sites of the world. And just as the supply chain has changed over the past decade and a half, so have our solutions.

Our solutions now range from modems and development kits for our new OG2 satellite constellation, to full turn-key solutions for the transportation and heavy equipment industries. We work with the top tier one cellular carriers, as well as other leading satellite M2M providers such as Inmarsat. We enable the tracking and monitoring of almost 900,000 different assets that span most of the world’s industrial complex and transportation systems.

From ruggedised and solar-powered trailer tracking systems to covert intermodal container tracking and theft prevention systems, we are constantly focused on solving the market’s needs. As an industry, we are on the cusp of something incredible. We have only scratched the surface of the power of M2M and the Internet of Things.