Mobile Batch Tracking - A Breakthrough in Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Globalization and expanding markets has invariably led to increasingly higher loads of goods traffic. This has resulted, amongst other things, in challenges to supply chain management in terms of cost pressure and demands for short-term availability of the goods. Considering that an increasing number of goods will be “on the road” (on rails, on ship, in the air) for an appreciable percentage of the life-cycle, there is an urgent need to bridge the information gap between the automated systems at the factory sites and the storage control systems at the destination sites. This chapter reports on a system solution that has been developed by T-Systems’ Solution and Service Center Ulm / Germany, within the Service Offering Portfolio “Embedded Functions”. The system solution has been gained as a synergy effect of connecting mobile communication solutions with Auto ID Services. It is presented here and discussed in the context of online surveillance during transportation, providing both downstream batch tracking, as well as upstream traceability.