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Where
is it all going?
So as we march across
the millennial divide will every item
be tagged, tracked and located and
will we see tags inserted into our
wallets with the specter of big brother
tracking our every movement? No, but
RTLS will become a fundamental part
of the supply chain management process
and will impact our everyday lives.
As RTLS develops
we will certainly see the impact of
Moore's Law on the technology as tags
and the location components reduce
in both size and cost. The real key
to the future however, will be how
specific markets utilize RTLS technology
and drive adoption through supply
chains. A useful model for the development
of the market for RTLS anticipates
three distinct segments for the adoption
of RTLS solutions.
The first of these
markets is the Facility RTLS. Facility
RTLS can be defined as the implementation
of RTLS within a single site or campus
for the purpose of implementing a
specific application, which has a
compelling return on investment for
the organization. Applications such
as yard management and container tracking
are examples of Facility RTLS. As
particular facilities implement a
single solution they will evolve to
multiple applications. The incremental
cost to implement the "next” application
is simply the cost of additional tags
and the integration of the locate
information with the application.
For instance, the marginal cost to
implement an asset tracking application
on an installed RTLS is simply the
cost of purchasing and affixing tags
to the high value assets to be tracked
and the setting of alarms and tracking
conditions in the software.
As groups of customers
and suppliers enable their facilities
with RTLS systems the Enterprise RTLS
market will develop. The key focus
of this market will be supply chain
applications. The development of Enterprise
RTLS will be based on companies becoming
committed as supply chain partners
and sharing their real time location
information with each other. Each
supply chain participant will have
visibility across the supply chain
through a web site, which will give
them real time updates on the availability
and status of critical inventory and
assets as they move through production
and transportation processes to the
next level of the supply chain. While
the development of the Enterprise
RTLS market is a few years away, early
adopters of RTLS are already contemplating
and analyzing the competitive advantage
to be gained through real time visibility
into multiple tiers of their supply
chain.
Separate from the
Facility and Enterprise markets will
be the development of a Personal RTLS
market. Here the RTLS technology will
be utilized to provide individual
subscriber services that may address
security, convenience and purchase
applications. For instance, RTLS is
already in use at several university
campuses. A pager size device provides
the real time location of a student
in trouble to the campus security
force. The student simply presses
one of three buttons to indicate a
security threat, a medical emergency
or a non-emergency problem. This alerts
the "campus police" who have the exact
location of the student. Future applications
of Personal RTLS may include applications
for frequent shoppers with automatic
identification and the integration
of RTLS with two-way pager capability
to facilitate both location and instant
response.
The initial industry
studies forecast that RTLS will grow
from a new industry in 1998 to a several
hundred milliondollar market before
2005. While the growth of the market
will be based on the adoption of the
technology, it will be the implementation
of innovative applications that fundamentally
change the business process that will
drive RTLS into the mainstream of
how companies manage their supply
chain with real time information.
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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?
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