It is a safe bet to say that these are all familiar issues when looking at returnable transit items such as roll containers. All of these are symptoms of the same root cause, which is the inability to know where your assets are. Lack of knowledge means lack of control. There has not been an economically viable solution available in the market to track load carriers, but that might change in the very near future.
K. Hartwall, together with its partners, is developing an asset management solution where in real time users of the system are able to see exactly how many units are in their control and where they are. The system will also provide information of past/history of movements as well as tools to plan and forecast the movement of assets. The technological solution will address many of the questions that have not been answered by alternative technologies such as bar code or RFID.
One might wonder, why a company manufacturing load carriers would develop solutions that help users manage their fleet more efficiently, thus reducing the need for new assets. We at K. Hartwall see this as inevitable way of the future, and want to be part of that journey rather than just be a spectator. After all, our mission is to improve our customers’ logistics efficiency through innovation, and that is exactly what we are aiming to do!
K. Hartwall is currently piloting the new tracking system with Finnish Posti, and the first results seem to be very promising. “It is an interesting technical solution because the infrastructure costs are low compared to other technologies. All postal operators, and actually any operator with load carriers are struggling with the same challenge. Nobody has solved that economically so far. “, says Asset Manager Lasse Mattsson at Posti.
“We want to have visibility in our own network so we know what is where. Within the tracking pilot, we were immediately able to see our static units in our Pennala DC [through the web portal]. We were also able to track the units outside the DC on the yard. ”, he continues.
Stay tuned for more information in the coming months or contact us to hear more!
