So -- Where is it?

For centuries organizations have faced the challenge of locating and tracking inventory and assets with brute force. Essentially the activity of receiving, storing and issuing inventory items and tracking the use and location of these capital assets has remained unchanged. Whether a scroll and quill, clip board and pencil, or a bar code scanner and database are used, the process is typically to receive items, put them away, refer to some kind of list and then find them to use the items in a process. Along the way items get moved, lost, and/or forgotten.

Some organizations have described their inventory process as moving products from one black hole to another because no technology or process has yet to provide information on where the items really are at any particular point in time. We have seen the implementation of bar code systems to automate certain transaction tasks such as receiving and issuing, but each of these tasks typically involves a person who is both handling the inventory and managing the transaction process. After the transaction is complete location information is subject to the idiosyncrasies of warehouse processes.

While Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) have addressed many issues and provided information on the last known location, no process has addressed the real world situation of unrecorded movements within the warehouse. Consequently, since the time of the first warehouse, there has been a need for materials expediters and more recently logistics specialists who search for the 3-5% or even 10-20% of the "stuff" that inevitably gets "lost" in spite of the systems designed to manage the process.

Just imagine the challenge of trying to find the exact location of one of thousands of containers of inventory in a large area where all of the containers essentially look alike. These inventory containers may be as small as a pallet or as large as a trailer truck, an intermodal container or a universal loading device (ULD), which are the shipping containers used by the air freight companies. While existing systems can help record when a container was received and where it was delivered, no system has yet been able to provide accurate real time location information Just imagine the challenge of trying to find the exact location of one of thousands of containers of inventory in a large area where all of the containers essentially look alike. These inventory containers may be as small as a pallet or as large as a trailer truck, an intermodal container or a universal loading device (ULD), which are the shipping containers used by the air freight companies.

While existing systems can help record when a container was received and where it was delivered, no system has yet been able to provide accurate real time location information to the managers of complex operations. No system that is, until the introduction of Real Time Location Systems in 1998.

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Related links on RTLS Technology
So -- where is it?
RTLS -- What is it?
RTLS to improve business
Where is it all going?

More links on RTLS
So -- Where is it?
RTLS -- What is it?
RTLS to improve business
Where is it all going?