Internet of Things has a plethora of applications to discover for Logistics and Supply Chain Management. IoT has made significant changes in logistics and supply chain and technology has been a major differentiator. From warehouse management to fleet management or even delivery and shipment, IoT has had its impact hugely. Let’s understand how IoT has enabled change in logistics and supply chain management.
Route optimization
An efficient route optimization scheme for the carriers can result in the elimination of carbon emission produced by every extra mile traveled. The impact that can be made by an IOT enabled route optimization system can save thousands of miles to be traveled by the carrier. It enhances the process by collaborating with all the units of the fleet that are spread over a large geography.
Capacity estimation and sensing
With IOT solutions for logistics, capacity estimation and sensing have become more comfortable. IoT helps in loading operations to be done quickly without any error. Operating inside the inventory in a warehouse can be tricky with frequent to and fro trips between the stacking shelf and containers. With the help of the barcode sensors, it is easy counting the units and maintains an accurate account of the inventory units.
With the IoT based capacity estimation and sensing solutions, the daily physical labor of the staff is reduced and improves the efficiency with faster operations. The redundant operations of manual checking and counting can also be removed from the process and the saved work hours and labor can be utilized in more productive ways.
Planning & reporting status updates
In-house visibility for the containers is as essential as in-transit visibility for the staff. It also helps in avoiding the theft or loss of freight scenarios where the staff is clueless about the needed shipment at the time of loading. This can happen because of insufficient planning and lack of real-time status updates about the location of the shipments. Inventory management can create some confusing situations for the consignments. It is not necessary that the location at which the consignment was dropped is the location where the picker will be getting the consignment from the same spot. It can get transferred to some other location in the same warehouse. IOT for logistics solutions is a much-needed relief in the vast inventories of the modern times as it tells the exact location of the needed load.
Energy management
Energy management is usually neglected as an in-house operation in the logistics industry. IOT applications for logistics provide automated solutions for companies that can now cut down their energy consumption by a reasonable margin. The IOT sensor enables monitoring solutions and can automatically shut down or switch on the power for the sections of the warehouses which are undergoing operations respectively. These IOT enabled heat and motion sensors to provide massive value to the administrators to ensure that they can utilize the energy resources more smartly.
Fault detection and rectification
IOT solutions are essential in reducing the repair and maintenance expenses. IOT applications for logistics also help in reducing the downtime by a considerable amount of time. It allows carriers get back in operations faster after a scheduled or unscheduled repair instance. It also saves crucial work hours for any business which might otherwise be used only for increasing the expenses for you.
