Cloud-based asset-tracking solutions are giving organizations a better view into their supply chains—and helping them improve productivity and efficiency inside, outside, and on the road.
Victoria Kickham started her career as a newspaper reporter in the Boston area before moving into B2B journalism. She has covered manufacturing, distribution and supply chain issues for a variety of publications in the industrial and electronics sectors, and now writes about everything from forklift batteries to omnichannel business trends for DC Velocity.
Cloud-based asset-tracking solutions are giving businesses a clearer view into their supply chains—and the ability to react more quickly to changes and make better decisions on everything from fleet management to quality and compliance monitoring. Compared with manual processes or traditional on-premise solutions, cloud-based solutions make it easier to access, aggregate, and analyze data. For one thing, their ability to gather data across multiple locations and analyze it in real time (or near-real time) speeds up the entire process, eliminating the need for cumbersome steps and complex system integrations that slow down the flow of information—and feeding users' desire for easier, faster access to information.
"Ubiquitous connectivity and users asking for information in real time at their fingertips has led to this revolution in cloud computing," says Nitesh Arora, head of marketing for Milpitas, Calif.-based Cloudleaf, which offers asset-tracking solutions that utilize edge computing (where analytics and data gathering take place at the data source) and the cloud.
The advent of such solutions also provides a pointed example of how cloud-based IoT (Internet of Things)-powered technologies are gaining a foothold in logistics and the supply chain, and how asset-tracking programs are particularly well-suited to advancing the mission of the cloud.
"Connectivity is the biggest advantage," says Arora. "The cloud is always on and can help you analyze data across multiple parties in the ecosystem, giving you the ability to react to changes in the supply chain much more efficiently."
Using a series of sensors and gateways, cloud-based asset-tracking solutions can gather data in the warehouse, in the yard, and on the road; analyze it in the cloud; and then report back to customers in a variety of formats. Cloudleaf launched its suite of solutions last fall, and the technologies are now in use with more than 10 customers in the pharmaceutical, automotive, and industrial markets. It will introduce a new mobile gateway this summer that will include enhanced GPS and cellular capabilities for gathering real-time in-transit data. The company joins a field of like-minded competitors, including BlackBerry Ltd., Honeywell, and Roambee Corp., all of which have introduced new or enhanced asset-tracking solutions in the last year or so, capitalizing on the connectivity trend that is driving the adoption of cloud-based technologies across the business landscape.
A recent study by material handling and logistics industry trade association MHI underscores these points. Its 2018 Annual Industry Report, published in partnership with Deloitte Consulting, shows that cloud computing and storage is the most-adopted new technology in the industry; the study of more than 1,000 supply chain professionals reveals an adoption rate of 57 percent. Adoption is expected to grow to 78 percent over the next two years, and to 91 percent over the next five years, according to the report. The use of sensors and IoT technology is on a similar growth path. Nearly half of respondents to the 2018 MHI study say they are using sensors in their supply chain operations. And though the adoption rate for IoT is just 22 percent today, it is expected to reach 50 percent within two years and 79 percent within five years.
"Digital transformation is top of mind for pretty much every executive out there," explains Arora, pointing to the convergence of IoT and the cloud as an important and growing means of solving supply chain problems—especially when it comes to inventory, fleets, and warehouses.
ENHANCING VISIBILITY
A clearer view into their supply chain gives organizations better access to data so they can, in turn, make better business decisions. Providing that supply chain visibility is a hallmark of cloud-based asset-tracking solutions, which generally come in the form of sensor tags that can be mounted on equipment or trailers, placed on boxes or containers, and even embedded into pallets. Sensors monitor the asset's location and condition, and can track mileage, maintenance needs, and utilization levels of trucks and trailers. Data are transmitted to a gateway and then analyzed in the cloud, and most companies deliver the information in the form of dashboards that can be accessed on a variety of devices; information can also be fed into an organization's enterprise applications.
The end result is access to information that can help reduce costs, improve productivity, maintain or improve quality levels, and prevent losses, among other benefits. Consider this: A grocery wholesaler can now track a shipment of lettuce down to the smallest details of temperature and humidity while en route to its destination, potentially allowing the wholesaler to avoid costly problems such as product spoilage. This can be especially helpful in the pharmaceutical industry, where failure to comply with government tracking and tracing regulations can cost companies millions in fines and material losses. Converting cumbersome manual tracking processes to those that employ sensors and the cloud not only increases efficiency, but also improves accuracy and quality.
"You have to make sure product is monitored not just for where it is, but for the condition it's in," explains Arora. "[With IoT and the cloud,] you never lose visibility of the product. For us, it's always on. Our customers don't have to scramble to see if they are in compliance."
IMPROVING MAINTENANCE, SECURITY
Cloud-based solutions are also making headway when it comes to better utilizing, maintaining, and securing fleets of trucks and trailers. Philip Poulidis, senior vice president and general manager at Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry Radar, says these are three key issues the company's asset-tracking solution is designed to address. The solution uses a sensor-based monitoring and tracking device, cellular connectivity, and Web-based applications that analyze data and deliver reports via a map-based interface that users access in a secure online environment. The small monitoring device is placed inside the truck or trailer and can detect load status (including percentage of load), as well as temperature, humidity, pressure, motion, and location. Sensor readings are taken every five minutes and sent to the cloud, where they are continuously analyzed.
Users can set the system to perform automated yard checks and to continuously monitor trailer utilization throughout the day. This helps fleet managers more effectively maintain usage levels and improve driver productivity.
"Customers tell us they've been able to improve utilization of trailers by about 10 percent," says Poulidis. "[This allows them to] take on more business and use their existing fleet more efficiently. In other cases, customers have sold some trailers [because they found they were underutilizing them] and put the money back into their business."
Such features also help reduce the time truck drivers spend locating trailers in the yard and at customer sites. Poulidis says companies are saving between 40 minutes and an hour of driver time per day by automating the tracking of trailers and containers.
"That adds up to a lot over the course of a year," he says. "It can add up fairly quickly in terms of cost savings and driver frustration. Every trucking company is looking at any way it can to retain the drivers it has or attract new ones. If you can save a driver 40 minutes to an hour by not looking for a trailer in a big yard ... that's an [advantage]."
In addition, cloud-driven mileage reports help improve fleet maintenance, augmenting the routine visual checks most companies rely on drivers to perform. Fleet managers can also use the solution to improve security. BlackBerry Radar can detect when a trailer door is open in a high-risk area, for instance, and send an alert to the driver and/or fleet manager. It also detects and sends alerts if something is missing from the trailer or if the trailer is not fully loaded.
EVOLVING TRENDS
Warehousing trends are contributing to the growth of cloud-based asset-tracking solutions as well. Poulidis points to companies' desire to store products closer to the consumer, which has led to a rise in "warehouses on wheels," in which some large retailers are renting trailers from trucking companies to store products for quicker delivery to consumers.
"Many people don't think about the logistics behind that," he says, pointing to a company's ability to accurately stock and replenish these so-called "micro-warehouses." "Having visibility into the capacity of the trailer is important in those situations."
A growing comfort level with cloud-based IT (information technology) solutions is also helping to sustain the momentum. Data security and privacy have been the chief concerns about the cloud, and those are beginning to ease as the technology becomes more ubiquitous and providers emphasize security methods and features. Poulidis points to the BlackBerry Jarvis software-as-a-service security analysis tool as an example. The tool analyzes software components for security and vulnerability. It was designed for use in the automotive supply chain but can be applied in other industries as well.
"For the most part, companies have overcome concerns they have [about the cloud]—primarily because in their lives as consumers, they are comfortable with cloud-based applications," explains Poulidis. "And even in their businesses, companies are using a lot of cloud-based services for their daily needs. So I think it's a natural thing for them now. It's a generally accepted fact that this is how business is done."
A team from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, walked away with top honors at this year’s event. It was the school’s first time competing in the scholarship competition, which was held during IANA’s Intermodal Expo in September.
The winning squad included students Jaren Bussell, Elizabeth Shuler, Brock Sooley, and Kathryn Whittaker and was coached by Dr. Donald Maier, associate professor of practice–supply chain. “It is exciting to see what the students can achieve in five hours. Each team reads, analyzes, and prepares a presentation with no faculty input,” Maier said in a release.
In addition to UT, participating schools included the California State Maritime Academy, College of Charleston, Georgia Southern University, and SUNY Maritime as well as the universities of Arkansas, Maryland, North Florida, North Texas, and Wisconsin at Superior.
IANA’s scholarship awards support curriculums designed to attract students to careers in freight and intermodal transportation. Since the program’s inception in 2007, IANA has awarded over $5.3 million in scholarships.
Family-owned business Cibao Meat Products, a producer of Hispanic-style sausages and deli meats, has long prided itself on staying true to the traditions and values the company was founded on in 1969—like a commitment to high-quality ingredients and a family workplace atmosphere. Less of a source of pride, however, was its continuing reliance on the same, mostly manual, processes and data management techniques used at its inception.
With the company now selling its meats to retail giants such as BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costco as well as 500 supermarkets and restaurants across the U.S., Cibao president Heinz Vieluf Jr. knew that it was time to take the company into the digital age. “As a third-generation leader of a multigenerational company, I put an emphasis on bringing our business into the digital future and utilizing technologies that will help propel success,” he said in a statement.
IN WITH THE NEW
In Cibao’s case, that would require modernizing its data-collection practices. Because the meat producer still relied on legacy processes, its company data and customer data were siloed, scattered throughout departments from sales to manufacturing to accounting. Teams were manually gathering information and creating reports on a weekly or biweekly basis. As a result, company leaders had no real-time visibility into business-critical operations. On top of that, creating those reports ate up hours of team members’ time each week.
For help bringing all of its organizational data into one central location, Cibao turned to the Slingshot work management platform from software company Infragistics. In October 2023, the company began working with Slingshot to compile data from multiple sources into a centralized hub that would be accessible to every employee.
Today, with the new platform in place, Cibao is benefiting from enhanced data transparency across the company and from accelerated data-reporting capabilities. Employees can now create reports within minutes, eliminating the biweekly reports in favor of daily assessments and unlocking insights needed to make critical decisions 10 times faster than before—saving 120 hours a month, the company says. For example, now that it has real-time access to its customer payment data, Cibao’s accounts receivable team has been able to detect any discrepancies in real time. This has allowed the team to check in with customers as soon as they notice a potential issue, which has increased the company’s cash flow by $40,000 a week on average, or up to 65%.
STRENGTHENING THE BOTTOM LINE
With teams saving hours each week on reporting, Cibao employees can now concentrate on higher-value tasks. For instance, they have more time to connect one-on-one with clients and develop relationships, instead of getting held up on the back end. They can also focus on new marketing efforts and promotions, not only boosting customer satisfaction but also helping to grow existing customer relationships and develop new ones.
“We created Slingshot to bring together data that has traditionally been spread across departments into one completely accessible space so that companies can better drive productivity, insights, and ultimately business results,” said Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot, in the statement. “By bringing its data into a central location, Cibao Meat Products has unlocked insights that have allowed [it] to move strategically and at a faster pace, strengthening the company’s bottom line.”
As autonomous systems take on a bigger role in logistics and industrial production applications, the race is on to make the equipment smarter, more efficient, and safer. To accelerate work in this area, the German lift truck and logistics technology vendor Kion Group is partnering with a local university to support expanded studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.
According to Kion, Peitz’s work will focus on the development of autonomous systems that operate intelligently and safely for all parties involved, with a particular focus on autonomous mobile robots, forklift trucks, and AI-based systems that are used in logistics and production environments.
The objective of the endowed professorship is to advance the field of research at the highest international level, Kion said in a statement. In close collaboration with research networks and other partners both within and outside TU Dortmund University, such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML and the Kion Group itself, the professorship will form a “hub” for digital and intelligent logistics, the company added.
American skin-care company ET Browne—best known for its Palmer’s Cocoa Butter—has trimmed costs, boosted revenue, and increased profits thanks to a recent IT upgrade from its longtime technology partner Syspro, a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider that specializes in serving manufacturing and distribution businesses. ET Browne has run on Syspro software for 25 years and racked up some of its biggest year-over-year improvements following a 2023 upgrade to the latest version of Syspro ERP—an enhancement that allowed it to leverage the platform’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities to build a just-in-time inventory system.
The net result? A smoother-running supply chain.
“We’ve successfully relied on [Syspro] for more than a quarter century while both growing and aligning our business to take advantage of the [platform’s] enhancements,” Pieter Goes, ET Browne’s vice president of IT & BI (business intelligence), said in a statement describing the project. “After bringing in [Syspro] to do native demand forecasts, we were able to better evaluate key markets and key customers, enabling our forecasting and capacity planning to be much more accurate. As a result, we can achieve a fill rate of greater than 95% and are able to process our purchase orders much sooner, resulting in better supply.”
NEW CAPABILITIES, BETTER OUTCOMES
Syspro’s MRP capabilities allow companies to balance supply and demand for materials and components so they can accelerate manufacturing production. With the system upgrade, ET Browne was able to take advantage of those capabilities to gain better visibility and control over inventory and the supply chain. As the companies explain, this allowed ET Browne to predict demand, understand how filling the projected sales pipeline would affect production schedules, and anticipate the peaks in demand it would need to buffer.
Leveraging those demand forecasting and supply chain management capabilities, ET Browne created a just-in-time inventory system that has dramatically reduced the amount of raw material and product it keeps on hand—a move that is translating into increased profits: Since implementing the upgrade, ET Browne has reduced inventory by 22% and increased profits 113% on 7% revenue growth.
ET Browne’s leaders say they intend to leverage Syspro to manage emerging challenges as well. Those include meeting growing consumer, distributor, and government demands to use recycled materials in packaging, while also making sure the company first uses up the materials it already has on hand. That transition will increase complexity within the company’s bill of materials, something Syspro’s management capabilities can help it navigate.
“[Syspro] ERP provides much more than just financial management,” Brian Rainboth, CEO of Syspro Americas, said in the statement. “Our platform empowers mid-market manufacturers to create accurate demand forecasts [and] project exactly how much raw material they’ll need to order and how much product they need to make to meet demand. We’re proud to celebrate 25 years with ET Browne and look forward to enabling future growth and profitability as the company deploys additional capabilities with [our] platform.”
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Illustration courtesy of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation
For consumers, the car-buying process generally includes a test drive so they can see if the vehicle lives up to its hype before they plunk down any money. But the process can be a little more difficult for commercial fleet managers.
The 2025 Peterbilt 579 day cab tractor, branded in Clean Energy’s signature green, will be available for fleets to test on their normal routes for up to two weeks. And if you don’t happen to have an RNG fueling station in your own yard, that’s no problem: The fleets testing the demo truck will be able to use Clean Energy’s fueling infrastructure, which consists of over 600 stations across North America, 200 of which have public tractor-trailer access.
First in line to try the new rig—which can haul heavy loads for an 800-mile range—is transportation and logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. After Hunt completes its trial, the truck will make its way through large and medium-sized heavy-duty trucking companies in California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Clean Energy says it expects to run the X15N demo truck program at least through 2025.
“Vehicles powered by renewable natural gas produce significantly less carbon emissions throughout their lifecycle and are more compatible with today’s available infrastructure than most competing emissions-reduction technologies,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability, and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The new technology and supporting fuel network in this pilot have the potential to be a viable, cost-effective solution for customers wanting to decrease their carbon footprint in the near term.”