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Industry

Asset tracking

Using tags, sensors and networks to know the location and status of physical items such as pallets, tools, containers or equipment, indoors and outdoors.

Asset tracking spans a wide range of technologies chosen by how often and how precisely the position is needed. Passive RFID records an item passing a reader. Bluetooth beacons give room-level location inside a warehouse. GPS trackers on LoRaWAN or cellular networks follow trailers across a country. Ultra-wideband gives centimeter-level position for tools on a production line.

The business case is usually lost time: staff searching for equipment, shipments that cannot be located, containers that sit unused. The trade-off is between battery life, update rate and cost per tag; a tracker that reports every minute will not run for years on a small battery. Our guide IoT in logistics and supply chain compares the options in context.

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