What If You Could Return Your Industrial Packaging?
It’s estimated that there are upwards of 20 million shipping containers in the world, undertaking around 200 million trips per year. With more than six million of these containers being moved at any given moment by rail, road or sea, a single international shipment can involve more than 200 interactions between 25 different types of organisations - from port handlers to freight forwarders to customs.
That’s a complex amount of variables for logistics and supply chain teams to manage, so perhaps it’s not surprising that car manufacturers can expect to lose 10 per cent of their container pool annually. As reported by Automotive Logistics, availability and tracking are the two biggest packaging priorities for the automotive sector, and ones that will see significant financial and structural benefits if managed successfully.
But what if there was a way to cost-effectively maintain complete, real-time visibility, of any container (and any cars inside them), anywhere in the world?
f it’s your responsibility to make sure the right part gets to the right place, at the right time, every time, or to find and integrate the right technology to make this possible, such an effective solution might sound too good to be true. Well - until relatively recently - it was.
Returnable containers & tracking challenges
Knowing where returnable containers are located, both within a logistics system and on the planet, can be a real challenge, especially if you don’t have the tracking infrastructure in place. And since spending on packaging is always under pressure, improving the shipping process is made all the more difficult when you don’t have the Capex to invest in it - after all, most businesses and consumers want to invest in what’s inside the container, rather than the box itself.
Nevertheless, innovation and investment within a businesses’ supply chain can go a long way. Having the technology to know where your containers are at all times means you will inevitably spend less time and money trying to track them down. You’ll also get more of those containers back, meaning you won’t have to pay to replace as many. It’s a simple notion, but it’s one which can lead to significant Capex and Opex savings. It also means you can run a more environmentally friendly operation and respond to potentially costly delays much faster.
The next question then, is how?
IoT delivering Capex & Opex savings for Groupe PSA
Knowing where returnable containers are located, both within a logistics system and on the planet, can be a real challenge, especially if you don’t have the tracking infrastructure in place. And since spending on packaging is always under pressure, improving the shipping process is made all the more difficult when you don’t have the Capex to invest in it - after all, most businesses and consumers want to invest in what’s inside the container, rather than the box itself.
As a result, we forecast 50 percent Capex and 30 percent Opex savings for Groupe PSA’s Logistics & Supply Chain.
Our solution works by adding a small, cigarette box-sized yet extremely robust GPS tracking device - which automatically recognises and adapts to local radio frequencies - to the container, a process that takes only two minutes. As these low-power devices are programmed to transmit only the data which Groupe PSA needs as and when they need it, the battery can last up to five years - a third of a container’s lifecycle. The data is then transmitted over Sigfox’s long-distance 0G network, which covers 60 countries, consumes very little energy and uses small amounts of data.
We were able to implement the device with practically no disruption to Groupe PSA’s infrastructure and, because we integrated IBM’s analytical services from the start, the solution will be able to evolve alongside Groupe PSA’s business. This is how, as a collective, we have overcome the three greatest barriers to global IoT adoption: affordability, energy consumption and global scalability.