Spoiler alert with Wirepas

Shipping valuable goods that spoil easily? Do your goods need to be stored in the right temperature and humidity or avoid shock to stay in mint condition for your customers? Need to know the conditions of your goods in transit or storage? Do you need to track your goods on-route and on-site? 

CUSTOMERS EXPECT QUALITY PRODUCTS 

Making sure that you are delivering your promises to your customers on the condition of the goods is vital. It will ensure a long-lasting customer relationship and keep costs down when you don’t have to compensate for spoiled goods, either in money or new products. Materials such as wood, paper, cardboard, foods, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, and consumer goods are very fragile for different reasons. All the goods mentioned are easily spoiled due to bad transit or storage conditions, such as wrong temperatures, humidity, and shocks. Each of these products requires specific conditions to be delivered to customers in their original condition. If the goods spoil, there will be both material and financial losses. Sometimes it just means that you need to reimburse the customer with new products, but sometimes it means that your delivery will be delayed, which can cause late fees on top of the loss. 

Transit, warehousing, and haulage companies might need to prove that they have stored and transported the goods in the right conditions to show no negligence and avoid covering the costs for the spoiled goods. The manufacturer or vendor of goods might also want to show that they have delivered everything in perfect condition and that the goods have spoiled afterward. The need for time-stamped sensor data is growing since showing the timeline of the exposure to poor conditions resolves the responsible party and prevents such from happening in the future. This will ensure that the customer receives only good quality products and stays a happy customer. 

HOW TO GET THE ALL-IMPORTANT SENSOR DATA?

You can connect all the goods and create an internet of things network. After connecting all the goods, you can use this network to collect the sensor data and send the data to a cloud to be processed into reports and alarms. This is easily achieved with a wide area mesh network, such as Wirepas Connectivity. It does not suffer from data collisions, can scale up to connecting millions of goods, and does not have density or interference problems. All the goods can send sensor data through the network to a gateway. The gateway is then connected via cellular, WiFi, or Ethernet to the cloud, from where the data gets forwarded to a backend system. Once the backend system is done with the numbers crunching, the customers can obtain information on the dashboard, such as reports, graphs, and alarms, to make critical business decisions. The time-stamped sensor data can be collected in different ways, and here are a couple of examples.

1. GATHERING DATA THROUGHOUT THE SUPPLY CHAIN AND SENDING THE DATA TO DISTRIBUTION CENTERS

— Sensors are attached to goods and gather the data throughout the supply chain. They connect and form a network that collects the data.

— Once the goods arrive at DC or the store, the data is sent to the cloud through a gateway placed in the premises.

2. GATHERING AND SENDING DATA THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SUPPLY CHAIN

Sensors are attached to goods and gather data throughout the supply chain. There is also a gateway device in every vehicle connected to a cloud via, e.g.,a cellular connection, and the data is sent on-route.

Distribution centers and stores also have gateways; therefore, the information is sent from there.
The backend gets the data in the correct chronological order since it is time-stamped, and no data will go missing.

All the locations can be in the network, and the data can be sent as frequently as needed since the connectivity between the goods is free of charge. The data can be sent via an Ethernet connection on-site to keep the total cost of ownership as low as possible. If the data is needed to be sent on-route, the costs will appear only when the gateway sends the data to the cloud.

SPOIL YOUR CUSTOMERS, NOT YOUR GOODS

Excellent service and immaculate products keep customers coming back to you. The goods stay in good condition by ensuring the proper transport and storage conditions and are not scrapped, reimbursed, or maintained. This will provide your customers happy with the goods they receive. Offering the customers on-site location data and tracking data along the delivery route as an additional service will be appreciated and valued in today’s high-paced society. Spoil your customers, not your goods!