Biscuit 'big brother' - asset tracking saves time, money and the environment

Whilst wandering through the aisles of your local supermarket, you're tracked by a silent host of CCTV cameras. This 'big brother' mentality may seem rather excessive, but compared to the produce stacked on the shelves and the packet of biscuits in your basket, you've almost slipped in under the radar! Asset tracking and vehicle tracking, which have monitored the journey of that packet of biscuits in every detail, are of vital importance to manufacturers and logistics companies alike; not only do they save time and money, they also help the environment and keep drivers safe.

Vehicle tracking often involves just tracking the trailers, especially if the company uses outside contractors to actually carry out the transportation. Vehicle tracking is not just about GPS monitoring to calculate the vehicle's location, speed etc., modern trackers are highly sophisticated devices that can tell the company exactly when and where each of their trailers was hitched and unhitched from a particular lorry cab. This trailer tracking isn't just about companies wanting to ensure that their contractors do their job punctually and efficiently, it's more to do with allowing companies to organise their own resources more efficiently at the distribution end of the supply line. As you might have already guessed, this involves yet more vehicle tracking.

To make the organisation of their resources and vehicle fleets as slick as possible, many companies undertake fleet tracking of their shunt vehicles; i.e. every one of their vehicles involved in transporting and loading products from the factory or depot into the trailers is also given a vehicle tracking system. The modern tracking software used can collect all the information from the trackers on each shunt vehicle to give an overview of how the fleet is performing whilst still being able to give detailed real-time information on each and every shunt vehicle. This fleet tracking gives companies the opportunity to increase their efficiency in numerous ways, from better organising their vehicles at peak operating times to merely staggering the times of each driver's break; even these small parts of fleet management, which would otherwise go unnoticed, save significant amounts of time and money. Driver performance management takes this idea even further: drivers of main delivery lorries have their driving styles, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions monitored to cut costs and help the environment; the driver performance management software even collates every driver into a league table!

Asset tracking enables companies to take this detailed approach to the next level. When a delivery arrives at a supermarket distribution centre, the GPS system in the driver's cab, part of the vehicle tracking system, is used to take an aerial photograph showing the exact location of the trailer; this may seem frivolous but in huge centres with multiple warehouses, knowing which warehouse a trailer has arrived at allows a company to work out how much time is being spent on getting the produce to the right place; it's not much good for efficiency if packets of biscuits sit outside a fruit and veg warehouse for hours! In combining asset tracking, vehicle tracking and driver performance management companies can adjust their procedures to save as much money and time as possible, whilst also helping the environment, in delivering your biscuits.

Netta Maistro - About Author:
Masternaut is the industry's leading pan-European telematics provider, offering accountable and sustainable vehicle tracking solutions. Masternaut also offers trailer tracking services, cost effective ways to optimise your fleet's efficiency.

Article Source:
http://www.articleside.com/business-articles/biscuit-big-brother-asset-tracking-saves-time-money-and-the-environment.htm

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