Visibility is the holy grail of supply chain management. In the past, "visibility" meant manual scans at checkpoints. Today, it means real-time telemetry from every container, pallet, and even individual package.
Beyond GPS
We recently deployed a cold-chain solution for a pharmaceutical distributor. It wasn't enough to know where the truck was. We needed to know the temperature, humidity, and vibration levels inside the cargo hold every second.
Using low-cost BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacons and cellular gateways, we created a digital twin of their entire fleet. When a refrigerator unit failed in transit, the system automatically alerted the driver and rerouted him to the nearest repair facility, saving $500k worth of insulin.
The Data Deluge
Streaming terabytes of sensor data is useless if you can't act on it. We use edge computing to filter noise at the source and cloud-based stream processing (Kafka + Flink) to detect complex patterns.
- Predictive ETA: Adjusting delivery windows based on live traffic and weather.
- Inventory Accuracy: Automated cycle counts using RFID drones in warehouses.