In supply chain management, location accuracy and precision are critical to ensuring goods move seamlessly through every stage of the journey. For industries like retail and automotive, where timing and availability of inventory are crucial, knowing where a shipment is at any given moment can mean the difference between meeting a deadline or facing significant delays.
Food and beverage companies must closely monitor the location of their shipments to maintain the cold chain for perishables. Pharmaceutical companies rely on exact tracking to prevent spoilage of sensitive medicines and vaccines. Automotive manufacturers depend on precision to ensure just-in-time delivery of parts to prevent costly delays in production.
Roambee delivers the location accuracy required to achieve these goals. By leveraging IoT sensors and advanced algorithms, Roambee ensures that assets are not just tracked but precisely located, no matter where they are in the supply chain.
Why Is High Location Accuracy So Difficult?
Achieving high location accuracy for supply chains is an incredibly challenging engineering problem. It may seem simple at first glance — just throw a GPS on a shipment and track it, right? But the reality is much more complex.
- Environmental Interference: One of the main challenges is the interference caused by buildings, dense forests, or even weather conditions. For example, GPS signals can be blocked or distorted by urban skyscrapers, leading to inaccurate location readings. This is particularly problematic in industries such as electronics or chemicals, where even minor misdeliveries can lead to significant losses.
- Multi-Modal Logistics: Supply chains today span across land, sea, and air. Each mode of transportation presents unique challenges in terms of maintaining signal integrity and ensuring consistent data transmission. For instance, tracking a container ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or following a truck through dense urban environments with tall buildings can lead to signal degradation. Roambee’s solution ensures that regardless of whether assets are in the air, on a ship, or in a truck, you’ll always know exactly where they are.
- IoT Device Durability: Not all tracking devices are created equal. Many IoT sensors face operational challenges in extreme conditions, such as high heat, freezing temperatures, or exposure to corrosive substances. This is especially true for pharmaceuticals or food and beverages, where temperature control and environmental monitoring are critical. Roambee’s sensors are designed to handle these harsh environments, ensuring they continue to function reliably no matter where they’re placed.
- Signal Consistency: GPS systems rely on a network of satellites that can be affected by various factors like atmospheric conditions or geographical obstructions. Maintaining signal strength in complex environments like underground warehouses or remote areas with limited infrastructure is a significant challenge. In retail and pharmasectors, where precise delivery windows are critical, any signal loss can lead to service disruptions and lost revenue.
The Precision-Accuracy Challenge: Explained with Real Use Cases
The diagram highlights four possible combinations of accuracy and precision in location tracking. In the world of supply chains, these combinations directly impact operational performance:
- Low Accuracy, Low Precision: In this scenario, the tracking data is neither accurate nor consistent. Imagine sending auto parts to the wrong factory; this level of inaccuracy leads to massive operational inefficiencies.
- Low Accuracy, High Precision: Although the tracking is consistent, the shipment consistently arrives at the wrong location. Think of this as always delivering goods to the wrong warehouse — reliable but unhelpful.
- High Accuracy, Low Precision: The tracking is generally correct, but the data is scattered. Your shipment may be in the right region, but the precise location is hard to pinpoint. This could be acceptable for bulk shipments but disastrous for high-value goods like electronics.
- High Accuracy, High Precision: This is the gold standard. Your assets are precisely where they need to be, and the tracking data is both accurate and consistent, allowing you to optimize your supply chain.
For example, in the food and beverage industry, knowing that a refrigerated truck full of perishables is not only en route but exactly where it is in real-time is critical for maintaining the cold chain and preventing spoilage. Similarly, in pharmaceuticals, high precision ensures that temperature-sensitive medicines are handled properly during transit, preventing costly compliance violations and loss of products.
Why Location Accuracy Is a Hard Engineering Problem
While achieving high accuracy and precision in location tracking seems like an obvious solution, it’s one of the hardest problems in the logistics world. Here’s why:
- GPS Signal Degradation: Even though GPS is widely used, it’s not always reliable. Tall buildings, weather conditions, and even geographic locations can cause signal degradation, leading to inaccurate location data. This is a critical challenge for shipments moving through urban areas or rural environments with poor satellite coverage. Roambee combats this with AI-driven algorithms that correct for GPS signal distortions and offer accurate real-time location updates, even in challenging conditions.
- Limited Battery Life of IoT Devices: IoT devices used for tracking shipments often have limited battery life, particularly when operating in difficult environments like extreme cold or heat. This presents a unique challenge in long-haul, multi-modal logistics where tracking devices may need to operate for weeks or months without recharging. Roambee’s IoT solutions are engineered for maximum efficiency, ensuring longer battery life and consistent performance across all transport modes.
- Multi-Modal Tracking: Tracking shipments that move across trucks, ships, and planes presents significant challenges. Each mode of transport has different infrastructure, and transferring tracking data across these modes without losing accuracy is no small feat. Roambee’s sensors are designed to seamlessly transition between these different transport methods, ensuring that tracking remains accurate and real-time, no matter how the shipment is moving.
- Data Overload: With IoT-enabled supply chains, there is an overwhelming amount of data being generated. The challenge lies not only in collecting this data but in making sense of it. Roambee uses advanced analytics to transform raw location data into actionable insights that can help businesses optimize routes, prevent delays, and manage risk effectively.
How Roambee Leads the Way in Location Accuracy
Roambee stands out by addressing these complex challenges head-on. Our solutions provide businesses with the exact, real-time location data they need to optimize their supply chains, reduce risks, and improve overall efficiency. Whether you’re tracking sensitive pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, or high-value electronics, Roambee offers an unparalleled level of accuracy and precision.
Roambee’s approach combines the power of IoT sensors, AI-driven data analytics, and cloud-based platforms to deliver cutting-edge solutions for global supply chains. By tackling the toughest location accuracy challenges, Roambee is setting a new standard in supply chain visibility.
In today’s fast-paced business world, having real-time visibility into your supply chain isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must. With Roambee, you can rest assured that your assets are always where they’re supposed to be, allowing you to make smarter, more informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
Optimize your supply chain today with Roambee — because when it comes to logistics, precision and accuracy matter.
