Dec 06/Jan 07

If your tracking system can be wrapped up in a small, self-contained device, you can track anything with it, from trailers and pallets to the products they are carrying. Sharon Clancy looks at various ways of doing it.

As the term suggests, assets are meant to benefit a company. They are items essential to the success of the business, whether they are vehicles or goods the company produces, or indeed containers or machinery of one sort or another.

Whatever a company's assets are, keeping track of them is attracting more and more interest as those companies recognise not just the need for tighter control over the whereabouts of assets, but also the advantage of using them to their full potential.

For logistics companies of course, many of the assets are mobile: vehicles, trailers, containers and pallets. However, in the same way that the type of product can determine how you move goods through the supply chain and what method you use to do it, the method you use to asset track depends to a great extent on the asset itself.

 

If it is a high-value electronic item, is it sufficient to track the trailer it is in? Or would something attached to the asset itself offer greater protection against the risk of theft, and more opportunity to follow it through the supply chain?

Many logistic companies rely on tracking trailer and vehicle movements to monitor the consignments they carry, but tracking unpowered assets such as trailers, containers, roll-cages and pallets presents a problem. Often, tracking systems are integrated with fleet management systems and focus on monitoring schedule performance, for example.

But what about all those assets where you don't need to communicate with the driver on a regular basis (assuming the asset has a driver, of course.)

Well, the good news is that a new generation of portable tracking devices and technology is emerging. Some were developed originally to provide location information for trailers, but are now regarded in some quarters as being equally valid for tracking items within the container or load itself. So you can track both the trailer and the items in it.

Portable

Portability and low cost are two of the keys to this new generation of asset-trackers. Battery life is critical, but so also is remote monitoring of the battery condition.

ICThings.com, for example, has recently upgraded its IC500e location device. The latest version has a new, smaller, moulded casing, enhanced functionality and extended battery life - up to three years on six AA batteries.

The specially-developed casing ensures added protection of the power management and location technology. Greater compactness makes it easier to conceal the device within an asset, too, and there are high-power magnets for attaching it to metallic containers and goods.

The new unit uses a modern GPS chipset. "Getting a fast position fix prolongs battery life," explains director Tom O'Connor.

A new member of the wireless portable tracker club is CMS Global Technologies, which has just launched Trailer Tracker. This uses low-cost radio technology. ZigBee, a recently-developed standard for low-power, local wireless communication, allows lots of small sensors to communicate over distances up to 100 metres, either with each other or with a ZigBee receiver, without risk of interference. Each sensor has its own battery, which lasts between one and two years, depending on application.

Each trailer in the CMS implementation is equipped with a ZigBee transceiver, which sends its ID to a GPS-enabled black box located either in the vehicle cab or at a depot. No separate GPS interface for the trailer is required - something that helps keeps the costs low. The vehicle transmits the trailer ID along with its own location fix, and the depot black box reports which trailers are on the site in real time, and when trailers arrive and leave. (The box is rated to IP68, so is suitable for leaving outdoors.)

The vehicle black box can also record the time the trailer is picked up and when and where it is dropped off. During transit, it is tracked via the vehicle's tracking system.

"We believe Trailer Tracker provides one of the most simple yet practical and flexible solutions yet devised to help trailer owners and operators manage and manoeuvre this type of mobile asset more efficiently," says CMS managing director Jason Airey. "We appreciate that trailer operators want to know where their units are and what they are doing at any given time so they can plan their use and make sure the units are where they should be. Using our system, they can now do this whether the trailer is mobile or stationary."

Trailer Tracker can be integrated with CMS's SupaTrak and Mobile Worker applications, with locations plotted on a map. Airey says the low cost means the commercial benefits are now well within the reach of all trailer operators. "They have the flexibility to select the basic system or choose from the wide range of options that offer additional opportunities to increase resource visibility and hence management control and productivity."

Perishable cargoes

ZigBee sensors are also proving attractive in temperature-controlled logistics for monitoring cargo condition during transit. The attraction here is that their batteries can withstand cold ambient temperatures without suffering a notable reduction in active life. Refrigeration equipment manufacturer Thermo King and trailer builder Schmitz are both using this technology to monitor box temperatures of refrigerated trailers and bodies without have to attach sensors permanently to the box itself.

Yet another approach to longer battery life has been taken by OxLoc, whose XL C80AL asset alert devices use two D-cell batteries. Assets can be monitored for location and condition four times a day for three years without the need to recharge or replace the battery, the company says. Just as important, a low-battery warning alert can be accessed via the company's Web site. Electronic seals provide a signal feed to alert the location of an unauthorised entry or tampering during shipment. Assets can also be monitored to provide an alert when they leave a user-designated area or cross a geofence.

Although not truly portable, the OxLoc device is self-contained, and fitting is said to take just 15 minutes.

Think lateral

An example of how existing assets can be upgraded to provide more information can be seen in Microlise's SofTrac application. Many Microlise customers already use the company's mobile data terminals for sending and receiving schedule or job information to mobile workers and drivers. SofTrac adds real-time tracking to the unit at little extra cost, and eliminates the need to hard-wire a separate vehicle tracking device into the system. It is aimed at fleets who require tracking of their delivery or service fleet as well as proof of delivery or task management, but who don't require the full functionality of a hard-wired in-vehicle computer linked to the data terminal (MDT).

SofTrac runs as a background process on the MDT to provide continuous data on the vehicle's location. This is sent back to the host transport management centre software in real time, using the existing GPRS capability in the MDT. The only additional hardware required is a low-cost GPS receiver, which connects to the MDT via Bluetooth or a serial cable.

RFID

Stuart Scott of Intermec is among those who believe asset tracking will be one of the core uses for radio frequency identification, or RFID. Tracking of shipping containers using passive RFID "licence plates" is an application with real potential, he believes. "The plates will be integrated by the owners, while additional tags will be introduced by the users of the containers to store information on the contents. Active tags are already used as one-life container seals, for security purposes."

He thinks RFID technology could expand into the pallet sector. "Tracking at the pallet level will greatly assist in monitoring goods flowing through distribution centres, as well as help transport providers close gaps in supply-chain visibility."

One supplier in this field that been using RF technology a long time to track vehicles and loads through distribution centres is Secureseal. Developed primarily as a cargo security measure, its system has the additional benefit of enabling managers to pinpoint the depot the trailer carrying the cargo is in.

Door security, load temperatures and trailer or vehicle location are collected at the depot over a free-to-use RF network. The data is logged on a local hub and then transferred over a GPRS network to a central server. The logger consumes minimal power, so it can be left on at all times, ensuring that vehicle location can always be tracked.

Secureseal has even developed a system that can interface with the vehicle's CANbus on-board electronic data network to collect information on vehicle and driver performance. Christian Salvesen is among the companies using this feature.

Microlise also reports growing interest in its RFID Trailer Portal. Because this system uses an RFID reader mounted in the trailer itself, there is always confirmation that assets have left a distribution centre or other location and are on board the trailer. The last known location of the goods is always available.

Cell-tracking developments

Often dismissed previously as having little potential as an asset-tracking solution because of its lack of pinpoint accuracy and sometimes high cost, mobile phone cell-ID tracking seems about to enter a new era. A key pioneer is Trisent, with its Tri-cell system. This combines 3G and GSM technology with an intelligent location server. The two are connected via the GPRS packet data services available through any mobile network operator. The system is already being used by FollowUs and Verilocation, two of the leaders in the phone tracking sector.

Tri-locator uses the same GPRS packet data system as GPS-enabled vehicles to communicate positions. The GSM modem in the phone takes various network measurements, collects them into a single data packet and sends it to the Trisent location server. Here, the data is cross-referenced with two databases to calculate the phone's position.

One of these is a historic database from other phones that have been located on that cell, and the database contains knowledge about that particular cell site. The technology minimises the relatively large errors that can otherwise occur when using cell ID, the company says, improving the accuracy rate from between 250m and 5km to between 100m and 600 metres.

It also makes live tracking by mobile phone cost-effective, the company claims. The cost of position fixes with cell ID means most companies restrict themselves to one or two per day. With Trisent technology, the company says users can poll the phone as many times as they want - every five minutes if necessary. Real-time continuous tracking is possible for as little as £1 per month. Currently Tri-locator work on Symbian and Java mobile phones.

Are you being used?

Some service-sector companies need to know more than just the whereabouts of their assets. For example, are contracted service levels are being adhered to? This type of monitoring has particular appeal in the local authority sector, where it can be applied to equipment such as street gritters and gulley-emptiers. By tracking whether the road-sweeping brush was raised or lowered, for example, the operator can prove not just that the vehicle drove down a particular street when it was supposed to, but also that the sweeping task was completed.

What next?

Portable tracking devices will become more widespread as the developers try to recoup their investment by seeking out new applications. The smaller the devices become, the greater the possibilities. This is good news for companies monitoring their mobile assets. Instead of various tracking devices for different types of assets, it might be viable to have just one or two deployed where necessary.