The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
1
The One Question You Must
Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For Container
Management
“What technology can I use to track
my containers?”
This is often one of the first questions we’re asked when
companies decide to start managing their reusable containers. It’s
a good question, but guess what? It’s not the right question. The
answers—each of the different types of technology you can use
to track your containers—are inconsequential if you haven’t first
asked the most important question. Here’s what you should really
be thinking about:
“Why do I want to track my containers?”
Your answer to the “why” of tracking containers will inform and
guide you through the rest of the critical decisions you will make
about tracking containers for your situation, from design, to
technology, to implementation. The “why” answers the question
with what you should do—not what you can do—to efficiently
manage containers.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Answer The “Why?” First
Your response will help you in the following ways:
•
You’ll reclaim 90% of your time. Instead of answering
questions that lead to more questions, options, and ultimately,
expenses, you’ll be able to identify the technology that is right
for your organization’s container usage. Initially, you will spend
longer designing and planning your system, but once you’ve
done it, it’s done!
•
It will help you establish a budget for the rest of your
asset management system. You’ll be able to identify if your
situation is a thousand-dollar problem or a million-dollar
problem from the outset instead of having to try several
different, expensive approaches.
•
Understanding why you need to invest in asset tracking
and management makes it easier for you to adhere to
your strategy and budget. Sticking to your budget will
require you to make hard choices and rationalize each
tradeoff. It’s easy for an uninformed person to say they are
going to deploy a certain technology to track their assets and
leave it at that. This type of process rarely equates to efficient
management and savings. In reality, an effective management
process usually comes down to spending hours walking
through the current process to determine exactly where
visibility is required as well as understanding of the tradeoff
between visibility and budget.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Here are some reasons our customers have decided to track:
•
They don’t have the right containers at the right time.
•
They need to comply with governmental or other regulations.
•
They want to reduce the number of lost containers.
•
Their customers mandate that they have a system in place.
•
They are spending a great deal of money on
replacing containers.
•
Management requires more information before authorizing
another container purchase.
Determine What Asset You Want To Track
Once you’ve figured out why you need to track your containers,
you need to determine what type of reusable you are tracking. In
general, as long as the asset is large enough to hold a tag, it can
be tracked. Identifying what you are tracking is important for two
reasons:
1. Each different tracking technology has different limitations
based on the density of packaging, its composition type
(whether it’s a liquid, metal, etc.), and temperature.
2. Identifying what you are tracking helps you determine
the most reasonable tracking method so you can narrow
your research to the best options for your situation. Each
tracking technology has unique strengths and weaknesses.
Understanding these strengths and weaknesses will help you
design a system that gives you the optimal data quality you
need to keep you from losing containers.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Determine Where Your Asset Is Going
After identifying the asset you are tracking, you need to determine
where the asset is going. This is where you take out a pen and
notepad (or use a workflow software) and plot out the flow of
your asset.
Here’s an example of a simple flow of a reusable container:
SUPPLIER
OEM
[Storage, Line,
Empty Storage]
WASHING
DISTRIBUTION
In the diagram, we see the path of the reusable as it goes
through its cycle. The asset flow you create will be useful to you in
the next step, which is designing a system that requires the least
amount of data to give as-accurate-as-needed information on
your reusable containers.
Considerations For Designing A Container
Management System
It’s easy to put a tag on a reusable container and say you’re tracking your assets. That flawed method is also expensive, and it’s
very likely that doing just those things won’t get you the data you
need. However, properly collecting data from your containers and
then using that data to manage your containers the right way will
give you the information you need to save money and increase
efficiency, because you won’t be losing containers.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Designing a system also helps you choose the technology that
gives you the data you need without any excess spending or resources. Keep these four things in mind when designing a system
for container management:
1. What Steps Can You Ignore In The System?
2. What Is “Real-Time Enough” For Your System?
3. Integrate Where Possible
4. Track Only Where Increasing Visibility Pays Dividends
1. What Steps Can You Ignore?
Most of the cost savings within a system are found in design.
Design saves money because it answers the question “what is the
least amount of data needed for your system to work?”.
Too often, people assume they need to see a dot that represents
the real-time, accurate-within-a-foot, movement of their asset.
While this type of tracking has a “cool” factor, it’s too ambitious;
it’s usually overkill and increases the cost of the project so much
that it never gets through the budget committee.
Design saves you money by showing you the steps you don’t
need in your system. Keep in mind, the more granular the
location data you collect, the more expensive the solution you
need. For example, it is much less expensive to understand
which building your asset is in than to know where in the building
your asset resides. The same is true for over-the-road tracking.
It’s much less expensive to know a package was shipped to a
company and record its data and time it left than it is to track that
asset over the road to the location.
When you eliminate steps or areas that don’t give you information
that matters, you save money, because you don’t have to track or
manage assets in those areas with no repercussions to
your accuracy.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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2. What Is “Real-Time Enough” For Your System?
Understanding the role of refresh rate on your system design
is critical. Changing the refresh rate of your system from one
second to five minutes may mean that instead of replacing a
battery every three months, you have to replace it only every five
years. Multiply that cost by the total number of batteries on all the
assets you track, and it adds up. Throw in the cost of labor, and
this can easily be the deciding factor in whether or not you can
make budget.
A well-designed system will give you the data that shows you what
“real-time” means to you. If you can extend your refresh rate, you
can save money; that’s exactly what your system will show you.
3. Integrate Where Possible
An integrated system may also drastically reduce costs. If you
already know where a shipment is scheduled to go, and 99.5%
of the time it goes to that location without delay, spending your
tracking budget to watch your asset go down that same, predicted
route is not the best use of your tracking capital. You don’t need
to track assets that aren’t costing you.
Using the process flow map out from the previous section, let’s
evaluate each step in the process:
•
Where can you get the information you need without
spending a lot of money? For example, you can see the asset
moves from the supplier to the OEM. Let’s say we are the OEM
who is designing the tracking system. Our asset’s first move is
between the supplier and us. Do we need to know when that
asset leaves the supplier, or is it good enough for us to know
when it arrives at our building?
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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•
If we do think it’s important to know when the asset left the
supplier, how can we get that information without installing
tracking technologies at each supplier? Do they send an
advanced ship notice (ASN) when they send their shipments? If
so, can they include the asset number on the ASN? If not, can
they enter the number of the assets they use into a website?
Either of these options will save us from having to spend
money on installing another tracking device using integrations
to processes that already exist. There’s minimal extra work
and cost required because we’re capitalizing on what’s
already happening.
•
By continuing to plot the potential movements of an asset on
paper to determine where it’s going and then overlaying what
is known about that map, we can determine where most of
the information we’re tracking is known, as well as where we
lose visibility. We have the option to eliminate tracking where
it isn’t telling us anything new, and we need to consider how
we can integrate visibility into processes that already exist in
places where we’re losing containers.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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4. Track Only Where Increasing Visibility
Pays Dividends
A common, incorrect assumption is that you should track all your
containers. This is almost never the case. To track all your assets
would be extremely expensive, ill-thought-out, and an ill-advised
way to use your resources. Instead, identify the gaps in your
tracking. Once you’ve identified the gaps, you can identify the
tracking technology that makes the most sense to understand
how information and patterns fit together, and ultimately, you can
stop losing your assets.
You should track the areas of your process that are low
confidence, where you need the additional visibility to increase
the level of confidence for a specific cost benefit. Test your
hypothesis to see if you’re right to avoid over tracking.
It is usually unnecessary to question your company’s invoicing
data; try to piggyback off of known information.
Selecting The Right Technology
When you have isolated your tracking to see only the visibility
gaps, the next step is to find out which tracking technology works
best to fill each gap. Below is a basic description of the tracking
technologies. By eliminating as many tracking technologies that
won’t work for your application as possible, you can begin more
in-depth research into the proper tracking technology for your
situation.
The five types of technology we will be discussing are visual,
barcode, active, passive, and real-time locating systems (RTLS).
Each technology has different variations, strengths, and
weaknesses. Taking the time to understand those strengths and
weaknesses will help you design your system with optimal
data quality.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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1. Visual
Visual technology is the most basic technology we’ll discuss.
It’s used when you need a simple, easy-to-see method for
tracking the same types of containers. Some examples of visual
technology include:
•
Colored tags
•
Numbered/serialized tags (used when you need to understand
a container’s path)
•
A combination of colored and numbered tags
Pros:
Affordable
Requires no infrastructure
Easy to implement (simply purchase a list of tags that are
serialized with unique numbers)
Cons:
Human error (mislabeling containers can create mistakes)
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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2. Barcode
Barcodes are machine-readable codes in the form of numbers
and patterns of parallel lines printed on objects to identify
them. They are almost ubiquitous with tracking objects. Barcode
technology for tracking doesn’t necessarily add more expense
than visual/tag technology, but does require infrastructure in
that you must use scanners to read barcodes. Cost of a barcode
system scales depending on the functionality and
integrations needed.
Pros:
•
Less margin of error using a barcode system than a visual
system because barcodes reduce the human element
•
Fewer human resources needed means lower cost
•
Can be distributed electronically (printed or emailed)
Cons:
•
Automation requires additional infrastructure (scanners)
The decision between visual and barcode technology is a tradeoff;
with barcode technology, you’re spending on infrastructure costs
and saving on labor costs. With visual systems, you’re spending on
labor costs and saving on infrastructure.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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3. Passive RFID
Passive RFID technology is often grouped with active RFID, but the
two are fundamentally different. Passive RFID tags do not have
an internal power source; instead, they are powered by a reader
that emits electromagnetic waves to induce a current in the tag’s
antenna. Essentially, a reader “wakes up” the device tag when it is
close enough. Because the infrastructure cost is high with Passive
RFID, it is best utilized for high volume, item-level tracking in a
defined location.
Pros:
•
Designed for short-range communication
•
Passive RFID chips are inexpensive
•
Does not require a power source
•
Does not require expensive replacements for power source
Cons:
•
Infrastructure costs are high
•
Little to no capability for external monitoring sensors
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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4. Active RFID
Active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags have a
transmitter and their own power source, typically a battery, that
allow tags to communicate with a reader. With Active RFID, the
tag is continually powered whether the reader is in range or not;
it is actively searching for the presence of a reader. Active RFID is
best utilized when you’re tracking a small number of high-value
goods over a discrete number of locations. Using active RFID on
low-cost items is usually not recommended, as the chip may be
more expensive than the items, unless the containers are moving
fast enough to prove out the cost. Wi-Fi technology is one subset
of active RFID.
Pros:
•
Low infrastructure cost
•
Designed for long-range communication
•
Has capability for external sensors that can monitor
temperature, motion, and other conditions
Cons:
•
Active RFID chips are expensive
•
Constant “active” state requires power source
•
Additional cost may be incurred if the power source needs to
be replaced or charged
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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5. RTLS
RTLS software can use both passive or active technology to collect
data and represent an asset’s location in real time, usually within
a defined area. Wireless RTLS tags are attached to containers, and
fixed reference points receive signals from the tags to determine
their location. RTLS is best used if you are looking for granular
information about individual items within a defined area. They do
not contain global coverage like GPS.
Pros:
•
Immediate, real-time identification of object
•
Most accurate technology
•
Compatible with passive and active technologies
Cons:
•
Expensive
•
Requires infrastructure
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Questions To Ask When Planning Your System
If you’re interested in starting a program, these questions will
serve as starting point for your team and template for your plan.
Your answers about the asset you’re tracking will guide you to the
best technology for your situation.
Questions About The Asset You’re Tracking
1. How many items are you tracking?
2. How many buildings are you tracking?
3. How do the items get into or out of the building?
a. Dock doors
b. Personnel doors
4. What is the average number of doors per location?
5. How often do you physically see the asset?
a. Every day
b. Once a week
c. Once a month
d. Once a quarter
e. Once a year
f. Fewer than one time per year
Questions About Granularity Of Location
1. What continents do you want to track asset on?
a. Africa
b. Asia
c. Europe
d. North America
e. South America
2. How often would you like to know the location of your asset?
a. Real time
b. 1-5 minutes
c. 15-30 minutes
d. Once a day
e. On demand
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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3. Where do you want to track your asset?
a. Outdoors
b. Indoors
c. Both
4.
Does the asset travel inside of a metal container?
5.
Does the asset travel to areas that do not have
cellular service?
6.
Do you want to know what building the asset is in?
7.
Do you want to know where in a building an asset is?
8.
How precise do you want your asset’s location in the building?
a. Less than 1 meter
b. 1-10 meters
c. 10-30 meters
9.
How precise do you want your asset’s location outside?
a. Less than 1 meter
b. 1-10 meters
c. 10-30 meters
Questions About Infrastructure
1. Does the location have internet access?
2. Is the internet high speed or low speed?
3. Do you have Cisco Access Points installed?
Questions About Labor
1. Do you have the ability to charge a battery on the asset
tracking device?
2. What quality of data is needed?
a. Used as an after-the-fact lookback
b. Used as real-time alert
Normally reusables can be managed without 100% accuracy by
building a self-correcting system.
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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Selecting The Proper Technology
Technology
Infrastructure
Cost
Tag
Cost
Labor
Cost
Has
Power
Supply/
Battery
RTLS
VISUAL
LOW
LOW
HIGH
NO
NO
BARCODE
LOW
LOW
HIGH
NO
NO
PASSIVE RFID
HIGH
LOW
LOW
NO
YES
ACTIVE RFID
LOW
HIGH
LOW
YES
YES
Wi-Fi
LOW
HIGH
LOW
YES
YES
Ultimately, the key to selecting the right technology for container
management is more than choosing between visual, barcode,
passive, or active technology. Selecting the right technology is just a
single part of a process that begins when you ask the question “Why
do I want to track my containers?”. By answering that question, and
then going step-by-step through each question that comes after it,
you will identify the best answer for your container
management needs.
Let us help you implement a reusable container
management system that can save you money
and time.
Let’s Talk
11470 Industrial Dr Galena, IL 61036
(815) 776-9470x280 • [email protected]
The One Question You Must Answer Before You Choose The
Right Technology For REUSABLE Container Management
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