Physical assets and materials form the crux of any enterprise. These materials / assets are considered to be of prime importance to a smoothly functioning enterprise as it reflects the investment and returns statistics overtime. The emerging issue rests upon the fact that a firm’s physical assets are spread over wide areas due to the divisions of parent branch across different cities within the country and at times worldwide. The widespread feature of physical assets of a firm, though seems flawless on a public facade, unfortunately masks tracking despair. IoT Asset Tracking system empowers you to tackle various problems, discover the same in this article.
As mentioned earlier, asset tracking is crucial to any enterprise. How then would you define asset tracking? Asset tracking is synonymous to management and monitoring of physical assets of an enterprise or industry within the vicinity of its placement and usage. There are various methods of asset tracking that firms have been adopting and practicing over the years (like that of visual inspections, scheduled checks, remote asset tracking, mobile app tracking and so on) and yet failing on different parameters with increasing investments on assets of a firm. Naturally, you would wonder what solution tackles increasing needs of asset monitoring and tracking for a feasible sustenance of business intelligence. Fortunately, the latest technology that is transforming industry maintenance and productivity is the Industrial Internet of Things that is embarking a journey of industry 4.0.
Internet of Things (IoT) based Real-time monitoring solution
Internet of Things is the technology of the current epoch that is changing the face of industry from version 3 to 4 that introduces automation in almost all recognized realms of research, work and business. With respect to asset management, all tracking and monitoring of physical assets are accomplished with utmost precision with IoT’ automation features for achieving the purpose of expanding your performance efficiency and business scope. The good news is that soon after you implement IoT automation and tracking within the working scheme of physical asset tracking, it transforms to become ‘Smart Asset Tracking’.
How can IoT technology be implemented in Asset Tracking through monitoring and tracking?
IoT based GPS activated tracking sensors (sensors that capture location and movement) are deployed on physical assets of the industry location across its divisions and each division exclusively. These sensors collect real-time data and communicate to an IoT Cloud through wireless network communication (such as LTE, Wifi, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and Sigfox). Data of each physical asset’s location and movement is traced and consolidated in the cloud, scrutinized to assort and record patterns of movement and placement on a regular basis. This prevents manual monitoring and visual checks that often is a close to impossible task on a continuous basis at all divisions of the firm across cities. The available data can be used to trigger automated SMS / Email messages on nearing crossing set boundaries / premises as a warming and on missing assets an alert that requires immediate action. All this data can be accessed by managers / supervisors, anywhere, anytime for apt and accurate information on movements and location of physical assets within the large storage facilities and in the premises of the firm.
Let’s observe the list of application solution that helps ease your experience with asset tracking amid growing investments in physical assets.
Locate your physical assets in time
Most enterprises invest in physical assets (storage cans, storage cartons, carts, load lifters and so on) hopping to make good returns in due course of time. To their dismay, when these assets are not properly recognised on their location; time and human efforts are wasted trying to manually locate and confirm its exact point of location. Time wasted can never be regained, this in-turn hinders productivity at some point. IoT technology can help solve this issue. IoT activated location detection sensors can be deployed on physical assets. These sensors collect data on exact point location and transmit it to an IoT enabled cloud, data in the IoT cloud is validated and sent to operators / managers. This data is made accessible through application dashboard to customers.
Track movement patterns of your physical assets
Physical assets of a firm are often moved from place to place for various purposes, could be aesthetics, department relocation and so on. In the meanwhile, physical assets could go here and there, and nobody can be blamed. If not found the enterprise incurs loss. Its time you know where and how your assets move along with an assessment of patterns. IoT technology facilitates you to understand and analyze the patterns of movement of your physical assets. The same principles of operation apply. All you need to do is deployed motion detection sensors / proximity sensors onto your enterprise’ physical assets. We’ll connect, enable and see to that you have real data accessibility as long as you are teamed up with us along with an internet connection.
Missing or not missing physical asset, confused? We’re here to sort it out.
It’s natural to get confused on the status of a particular physical asset with manual / visual inspection overtime. At times, barcoding does not solve the issue. Don’t worry, IoT can! IoT technology with its glowing features helps you with exactly knowing the status of a specific physical asset amid hundred others. With its operational functions, it clearly informs you on whether the asset is missing / not found or better even, alerts you when its moving beyond the allocated area. You can then have complete transparency on investment and maintenance ends for progressive business growth.
How Fogwing IoT Apps help managers / customers adopt IoT technologies easily?
Fogwing IoT Apps are web-based application systems that encompass IoT infrastructure to solve complex business challenges. Fundamentally Fogwing IoT Apps are custom application modules on top of the Fogwing Industrial IoT Platform. Fogwing IoT Apps based Environment Monitoring Solution will address above discussed Asset Tracking challenges.
As part of the Fogwing IoT Apps – Environment Monitoring Solution package, we provide sensors to measure GPS activated Movement detection and Proximity along with wireless Gateway / Router that will be deployed in physical assets of a firm for purposes of tracking. These sensors are internet connected that will collect various data points from each physical asset following which will send it to Fogwing cloud infrastructure. In the Fogwing IoT cloud infrastructure, these data’s will be analyzed by our advanced data processing engine to validate the data integrity and accuracy. Managers / owners may set a threshold against these data sets to trigger automated alert for prevention of damage and loss in business intelligence. The customer can also access this data through Fogwing Web application dashboard. In case the threshold limits of the physical asset moving out of its assigned vicinities are being reached or has exactly reached, Fogwing will send signals to the microcontroller to close doors / gates hoping to secure the asset (depending on the data threshold) to maintain viable conditions.
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, one can state with conviction that Fogwing IoT technology facilitates its customers to accurately learn about their physical assets and track them without ruining their investment. It also helps to automate maintenance processes within the vicinity of housing physical assets and thereby going forward assures a stress-free business management. By doing so, it conquers repercussions like that of business failures caused by loss of physical assets, transparency issues and so on.
At Factana, through our Fogwing Industrial IoT platform, we offer one stop automation solutions that enable you to achieve greater laurels. Fogwing operates to provide systematic operations with asset tracking to ensure close maintenance, care and monitoring. As a cognitive platform, Fogwing helps you access real time data that improves your maintenance / tracking standards. Fogwing platform is engineered to suit your needs and provide services that lead to success stories! Grab the opportunity at sight and experience industry 4.0!
If you have further question or need help to solve your asset tracking challenges, please write to us [email protected]