Showing posts with label cargo damage. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 November 2022

IOT Supplychain Visibility Test 947

Virgin Active Ride Joburg 947 Cycle Race

Supply Chain Visibility real-world experiment @ Ride Joburg 947 Cycle Challenge

This past weekend was one of the highlights of the cycling calendar in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Virgin Active Ride Joburg 947 Cycling Race (https://ridejoburg.co.za/) took place on Sunday 20 November 2022.

Some quick facts:

Ride Joburg 947 cycling race is the world's second-largest timed cycle race (after the Cape Argus which is the biggest of its type)
The Ride Joburg 947 race typically draws between 20 000-30 000 competitors, but this year the ridership might have been slightly lower - we have not yet been able to confirm the accurate number of participants for 2022
This year’s route distance was extended from the traditional 94.7 km to a somewhat more challenging 97 km (60.27 miles) and took place at an altitude ranging between 1400 to ± 1740 meters above sea level.
Sunny Highveld summer conditions prevailed with temperatures exceeding 30°C (86° F) in places

Data from Strava - an app for sports people (for comparative purposes)

Real-time tracking

Cogniplex decided to put Tive’s Solo 5G™ tracker to the test, under real-world conditions - during the Ride Joburg 947 Cycle Race.

1x Tive Solo 5G tracker was discretely slipped into a Cogniplex Ride Joburg mountain bike rider’s backpack, safely nestled between energy bars and energy drinks for the ride.

The tracking unit

The Tive Solo 5G tracking unit is small and discreet

Weight 100 grams
Accuracy:

Cellular 500 m
WiFi geolocation 50 m
GPS 5 m

The tracking unit placed inside the backpack

What sets the Tive unit apart from other trackers is the range of readings it can make in addition to basic location reporting. Analysis of the trip data reported the following:

· Real-time location

Driving to the event we were redirected twice due to misunderstanding road closures, but still arrived well in advance at FNB Soccer City for our batch starting time.

Note that the Tive Unit is not a navigational tool directing you where to drive, but rather a reporting tool recording where the unit travelled.

Live tracking - screenshot was taken post-event covering movements over 24 hours

The platform offers:

geo-fencing,
clickable and zoomable maps down to street level,
data at each measuring point along the route.
While we only used 1 tracking unit for this experiment, the platform has the capability of tracking multiple tracking units simultaneously.

Each of the readings below can be tied back to a specific date, time and GPS location. This means a detailed audit trail is recorded onto a cloud for each trip, recording at any given moment:

· Real-time temperature

Note that the temperatures were recorded inside a backpack, meaning external/ambient temperatures could have been higher

Temperature readings

· Humidity

Again, recording inside a backpack. The higher readings around 2 pm were recorded when the rider stood under a water hose to cool down

Temperature readings

· Real-time acceleration

Acceleration is measured in G-force (a measurement of the type of force per unit mass) and not in km/h.

These measurements in the context of logistics could indicate rough handling (e.g. dropping, knocking, bumping or throwing of items), or bad road conditions (traffic or other accidents, sudden stops or extreme braking). For our rider, this meant uneven road surfaces and speeds of up to 55 km/h, and dropping the backpack once or twice.

Acceleration readings

Tracking your precious - Supply Chain applications

This platform offers real-time visibility across the different functions and geo-locations in your supply chain. Adding a Tive Solo 5G unit or more than one unit to your cargo, whether stored in a warehouse, or carried by your own trucks, or third-party/outsourced transporters (3PL, 4PL etc) offers the following benefits:

The units are easy to activate and easy to use, with a battery life of up to 90 days (depending on reporting period setting selected).
Tracking units can be individually charged with a cell phone charger.
The tracking unit can measure local conditions in time units ranging from 2 min to 5 min. This means every 2-5 minutes you can monitor in real-time the following conditions:

Location – monitoring the actual location to detect delays, possible unauthorised stops, or deviations from approved routes
Temperature – monitoring temperature-sensitive cargo, cold chain products, and perishable products e.g. to monitor SLA compliance, product or health & safety standards, etc
Humidity – monitoring humidity-sensitive cargo, electronics, cold chain, and perishable products e.g. to monitor SLA compliance, product or health & safety standards, etc
Light – confirming whether the truck/packaging has been compromised or opened along the way
Acceleration – detecting bumps, knocks, and heavy handling will enable you to pinpoint damages and prove negligence for breakage

Not only does the Tive Solo 5G allow you access to real-time condition confirmation, but it also comes with the added benefit of historical data accessible from the cloud for a period afterwards ranging from 24 hours to 90 days.

Benefits of Visibility on your Supply Chain

The benefit of having full and real-time supply chain visibility provides bonafide fleet operators/transporters as well as cargo owners/importers / exporters with the peace of mind to:

Drive accountability
Monitor transporter performance
Monitor safe handling of goods
Enforce SLAs and penalties
Prove damages and reduce claims
Reduce unnecessary stops, route deviations, and unexplained delays
Track late cargo

We are happy to report that both our Tive Solo 5G tracker and our rider (eventually!) completed the journey and got back home safely.

Should you need more information or wish to have a confidential discussion about your specific requirements, please contact Benjamin@cogniplex.co.za

Please note that Cogniplex is not an event organiser, corporate sponsor or in any way associated with the owners and organisation of the Virgin Active Ride Joburg 947 event of 2022.
All trademarks and IP is the property of their respective owners.

Need more information? Want to start a pilot project? Please contact us

If you have found this article useful or interesting, please share it with others in your company or industry.

#IOT #supplychain #riskmanagement

Tuesday, 14 June 2022

Dude where's my cargo? Supply Chain Visibility Example

Dude where's my cargo?

Estimated reading time: 4 min

A hypothetical supply chain risk scenario unfolding in real-life

Short summary translation of the above newspaper article that appeared in the Rapport newspaper on 12 June 2022:

A transport broker contracted a reputable transport company and made available cargo to be transported with the very reasonable expectation that said cargo (maize meal) would be carried from Point A (Meyerton SA) to Point B (DRC) by the appointed transporter.

Why was this a reasonable expectation? - The transporter

was a reputable and reliable company,
specialised in cross-border cargo,
had good references from a range of clients,
had done this type of trip before,
appeared to had a reliable fleet, and
the necessary minimum payments were made.

However, according to the newspaper article, the client in the DRC informed him after some time that some scheduled deliveries never took place, despite payment and import clearances. Due to delays caused by border clearances and Covid19-related supply chain delays, the time required to do a one-way transport increased from an average of 14 days to 45 days. This made it difficult to gauge progress. Despite querying the progress often, the transport broker was assured all is under control and in accordance with the schedule. For this reason, the problem was not picked up much earlier.

It is only after a phone call was received from a (probably) irate client in the DRC, that the transport broker's lingering suspicions got the better of him and he realised something major was amiss. He then jumped in his car, drove to the transporter’s premises, and much to his shock and horror discovered rows of semi-covered pallets of maize meal exposed to the elements: sun, wind, rain, and insects.

This matter is now before the court.

This situation was preventable

We are using this real-world example, not in order to finger-point any type of transport service provider or attempt to allocate blame, as that is the matter before the court. For this reason, we also removed the names of the parties involved as it is not particularly relevant to the point being illustrated.

This case, however, is a real case study where a number of parties to a cargo shipment that has to be transported from A to B have to rely on each of the other role players to do the right thing at the right time and thereby prevent any potential transport risk from materialising.

The client (and their broker):

Had to rely on the verbal confirmation of the service provider/transporter without any 3rd party or IT system confirmation of facts,
Did not have reliable means of communication with drivers,
Did not have agents at way-points to confirm status,
Did not have any access to real-time reporting on the location of the cargo, and was, therefore, unable to track actual trip progress made,
Did not have any real-time information on the condition of the cargo, and was, therefore, unaware that the cargo was left standing in the sun, wind and rain for an extended period of time.