Digital Logistics 4.0 has been described as the most disruptive and lucrative sensing application of IoT technologies to occur in the next 10 years. It provides live tracking and accounting information for fleet management, order management, warehouse operations, transportation and labour management. This kind of real-time insight is of particular importance in the high-value goods markets where loss or damage can mean high costs or the loss of an irreplaceable item of cultural importance. General asset tracking, such as the movement of assets for companies such as water/gas distribution, civil infrastructures (buildings, cities), manufacturing 4.0 and transport, allows companies to completely overhaul their supply chain and logistics operations to deliver more goods faster and at reduced cost.
Current asset tracking systems are expensive and prone to a variety of security problems. The Logistics 4.0 project seeks to address these problems through the development of an asset tracking system that combines low-cost wireless sensor technology with state of the art cryptography and event-detection. This system will work in an unobtrusive way to safeguard the integrity of high-value items during all stages of the logistics process.
For more information, visit Tate’s Logistics 4.0.