SENSING & SENSE MAKING- IoT in the World of Logistics and Field Service Management

– Arpita Sharma, Divyang Bhimani, Ajay Hajare, Sarthak Sharma

We live in this SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytic & Cloud) era, where IoT (Internet of Things) is the most trending buzzword today. Clearly, why these tech geeks are going gaga with this upcoming technology, as they are clearly able to visualize the impact and extent to which things can be simplified even in day to day operations.

Logistics and field service management which is a part of our daily lives directly or indirectly is the most unorganized sector, especially in developing countries. All of us at different occasions have witnessed late and unplanned deliveries, big trucks jamming the most used & critical toll booths for hours, goods not traceable, stock out at stores due to manager’s unawareness, etc. Thanks to the ever-evolving technology which is bringing simplification, improvements in processes and services to the complex logistics and field service management operations, we can now breathe easy knowing that our deliveries will be handled with care and delivered on time.

LogiNext aims to unleash the benefits of IoT to simplify operations and increase efficiency in Logistics and field service management domain. Below are few areas to immediately cater to:

Need for transparency and integrity control (right products, at the right time, place, quantity, condition and at the right cost) along the supply chain.
Real-time visibility to end consumers for detailed shipment tracking.
Business to have integrity control especially for sensitive goods.
Companies in logistics management sector need transparency of networks and assets being used for ongoing optimization of efficiency and network utilization.

Introducing IoT in Logistics and Field Service Management

The major loophole today is visibility of operations and to know where the business has the opportunity to optimize. Logistics and field service management is one of the most disruptive areas, hence, to increase visibility, we need to provide descriptive insights and detailed information on where the business is going wrong and predictive analysis for the future, with some specific insights that will guide on the future projections for the business. In logistics management industry, IoT helps businesses and their operations in immense ways, Introducing IoT in Logistics management industry can turn the most haphazard sector into structured one with enriched route visibility.

Asset tracking is the key towards managing the resources and inventory. Real time tracking plays a huge role nowadays for any logistic management solutions provider, like LogiNext, who is global #3 in providing logistics and field service management software which offers any logistic company, seamless harware agnostic tracking with LogiNext Haul and mobile tracking in LogiNext Mile product. Internet-connected trackers use long-range networks or Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) to let companies track specific items throughout their delivery journeys by which estimated time of arrival for the shipment can be predicted.

Imagine that your restaurant is using on-demand logistics solution, manages your food inventory based on tracking your orders and their descriptions, tracks order ratio and as soon as it meets threshold amount for your items in your food, it triggers an alert to the specified person, or let’s say, store manager, and ask for confirmation for placing order for low inventory items.

On confirmation, it just simply places the order for those items and even updates ETA for the arrival of those items. This flow has already reduced time and efforts required for inventory and logistics management, and going forward, on basis of ETA provided based on origin and destination and real-time traffic conditions,

it will analyze current inventory on the basis of the predictive analysis, data gathered
it will update for how many more orders current inventory will work
it would show you by what time how many orders you can serve
it would show how many orders you may miss in future based on your ETA (on basis of average that you get orders every day)
and it would directly calculate loss if any on basis of that.

This would help you directly optimize your inventory management by setting up more rules. So, with IoT technology in place, it can optimize business and also elaborates some of the loopholes in the way business is running and where they can optimize it to save cost.

So, that was inventory management with on-time order management placing and order data analytics. Now with Long Haul Logistics, visibility is the main concern, especially with special items which are sensitive to the environment like Medicine, Chemicals etc. IoT can really make sure your packages stay in the suitable environment and if there is any breach it will alert the specific person and notifies them to take necessary actions.

Process of IoT Connectivity

Great value propositions can be created when one can visualize and analyze data generated through IoT. LogiNext has been effectively able to add value to businesses with its logistics and field service management modules and analytics. The below mentioned 2 bestselling cloud-based analytics software have been able to reduce up to 15% of the cost incurred in daily operations for our esteemed clients.

1. Over-speeding Analytics: Clients are sent real-time alerts on vehicle exceeding the specified speed limit. The complete vehicle speed analysis report is generated providing visibility to policy adherence for safety reasons.

2. Detention Analytics: Clients can foresee the delays through the heat maps and take measure to avoid the same. This has resulted in large value generation and cost saving.

3. Route Deviation Alerts: This is one of the most critical features which alerts the central HQ with any type of deviation which takes place in the planned route of the inter-city in transit fleet.

With the help of IoT more can be achieved. We have seen advanced RFID tags placed on vehicles which has drastically reduced toll booth queues and will probably eliminate the toll traffic completely and we will definitely witness more such groundbreaking disruption in the near future which will take us towards the next step of advance automation in logistics and field service management.