BLE ROLL-CAGE BEACONS

How Beacon Technology-enabled RTI Tracking & Management Provides Value

Customer: Top 3 - Automotive Supplier in India

Our Customer is one of the world’s leading specialised automotive component manufacturing companies for OEMs. It was established in 1986 was listed in 1993 on BSE and NSE in India. The company is a focused, dynamic, and progressive company providing customers with innovative and value- added products, services, and solutions. With a diverse global customer base of nearly all leading automobile manufacturers globally, the company has a presence in 41 countries across five continents.

Challenge

Businesses continuously seek ways to make their distribution methods faster, more effective, and more secure while squeezing out cost and inefficiencies. Returnable containers and other reusable logistics assets are used extensively throughout the supply chain – from suppliers to manufacturers, across warehouses to OEMs and point of sale – to effectively deliver goods and parts to desired destinations without the waste that occurs with one-way containers.

Automotive supplier teams face unique challenges that arise from the nature of the business. They struggle with a consistent lack of visibility into their inventory, including the lack of a mechanism for alerting them when roll-cages go missing, a problem that leads to significant losses. They also lack insight into the utilization of their assets and the location of specific roll-cages, which causes unnecessary bottlenecks and an inability to predict them ahead of time. 

Several obstacles prevent  companies from getting the details they need to properly manage a reusable asset fleet:

Solution - SmartX HUB BLE Roll-Cage Tracking

Our Returnables Asset Management solution leverages analytics, geofencing, and beacons to accurately identify and monitor an asset’s location and movement within an industrial facility.
Assets are tagged with cost-effective beacons to provide a foolproof strategy to avoid shrinkage. When an asset crosses a geo-fenced border, an alert is issued identifying the asset as well as the precise location of the area.  Asset utilization data can be integrated to provide detailed insights into maintenance history.

Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is one of the most versatile, accessible, and cost-effective asset tracking technologies available. A small beacon attached to an asset emits a Bluetooth low energy signal that Bluetooth-enabled devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops can read Leveraging existing devices and beacon low-power requirements make BLE one of the most cost-effective asset tracking solutions.

Bluetooth roll-cage tracking can give you better insights into the full utilization of your equipment: who is using it, how often it's getting used, and how many units you have sitting empty at any given time. Bluetooth roll-cage tracking may, for example, let you see that you have empty units sitting in a warehouse that no one on the team is actually using and, as a result, you can decrease your overall costs by bringing in existing equipment and using it to full advantage, rather than trying to replace it. 

Furthermore, you'll get a look at which locations are fully utilizing the equipment they have available and, therefore, how you may want to change equipment placement in order to allow those locations greater efficiency and freedom. You may, for example, discover that adding a couple of roll-cages to one location can substantially increase their efficiency, while another does not need to utilize them at all.

Benefits

Real-world customer implementations of auto-ID-enabled RTI tracking solutions have demonstrated ROI in less than 12 months. More importantly, these solutions easily integrate into existing business processes to help provide a more seamless implementation and even more value. As early as the first complete turn, companies can leverage data to make smarter decisions, better manage supply chain partners, create process efficiencies and gain more control over the total supply chain costs.

The visibility that our Bluetooth roll-cage tracking beacons system creates allows for shared ownership of returnables, which enables all participants in the automotive supply chain to handle each container to the best of their ability. We believe that this provides the foundation of a truly valuable returnable container management solution.

Improved returnable container turnaround/cycle time:

The faster containers turn, the fewer are needed. The solution reduces the total number of containers in the system and the initial investment. It also reduces the cost of handling unnecessary containers that have to be stored, cleaned, and refurbished.

Reduction in reconciliatory processes:

With our Bluetooth roll-cage tracking solution, you can get real-time insights into where each roll-cage is, what's on it, and how it's moving.

The SmartX HUB BLE system, automated alerts, and escalations, such as containers being at a facility for more than 30 days, will eliminate the need for issue identification altogether and can automate the communication and resolution of issues when alerts are sent directly to the relevant stakeholder who has the containers.

Reduced container losses and shrinkage:

The visibility enabled through the Bluetooth roll-cage tracking beacons provides accountability. This, in turn, leads to more careful handling and to less shrinkage. It can also be argued that knowledge of the existence of the SmartX HUB Bluetooth roll-cage tracking beacons system discourages mishandling.

Transportation optimization:

Optimization of the transport process is an added benefit of the SmartX HUB BLE system. Knowing when shipments leave and arrive and the truck capacity for each load based on BLE tag reads are opportunities to exploit.

Tracking your roll-cages and what's on them can often help you identify places where you can cut costs throughout your supply chain, whether it means sending out roll-cages fully loaded instead of half empty or making sure that those units take the most direct route possible to their end destination.

Cost recovery for lost containers:

When containers are lost, it is apparent where they were last seen. Relevant stakeholders can be charged for containers that are lost in their facilities. We have seen losses of between 5% and 15% of all containers over the duration of a program.

Conclusion

Today’s supply chains are becoming increasingly complex with greater demands on status
information and security, as well as the assets themselves. The pressure to do more with less combined with rising costs of new RTIs means that it is now more important than ever for organizations to squeeze efficiencies out of their supply chains, though companies are also very conscious to only invest in fixes that will provide value in the long term.

BLE Roll-Cage Tracking Technology-enabled returnable asset management solution addresses all of these issues. BLE Tags enabled reusable asset tracking and management solutions to provide much greater visibility throughout the supply chain such that companies don’t have to carry excess inventory and waste valuable resources in order to ensure continuity of service. Therefore companies should seek proven solutions from experienced vendors.

Benefits

How can we help you?

Contact us at the SmartX office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.

Let us know how we can help you solve your business challenges!

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