Mobile asset management is managing availability and serviceability of assets used to move, store, secure, protect and control inventory within the enterprise and along the supply chain or in conjunction with service providing.
Mobile assets are e.g. of the classes of
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Additional feature to decide for tracking typically are reasonably high value of the tracked objects themselves or of any high-value contents or any special operational importance attached to them.
Examples for such objects include
Persons may be tracked as objects due to emergency reasons, e.g.workers in power plants, chemical plants, and tunnel construction sites. These persons get tracked to locate them reliably and quickly in the unfortunate case of disaster.[3]
These assets are often in the hands of third party entities (such as suppliers, customers, logistics providers and carriers) and out of sight and control of the owning entity. They usually represent a significant capital expenditure for companies and their management and maintenance is resource-intensive.
On average, businesses spend 5% of annual revenue on logistics assets, and almost one-fifth of respondents spend more than 10%.[4] The annual costs include the replacement of lost or damaged special containers, where typically up to 30% of the containers are surplus in circulation just because nobody knows when and where.
Mobile asset management providers manage asset operation within the supply chain, directing the activities of a client’s third party logistics company as needed and ensure proper services are performed on the asset (handling, cleaning, maintenance, repair). These providers also study business processes within the supply chain and help optimize each process.
Different methods exist to track and manage mobile assets. Today, companies use labor-intensive manual processes to track assets between manufacturers and distributors, which can result in higher supply chain costs and processes that are less reliable due to natural human error. Specific identification of the container’s origin and destination is virtually impossible under this method.
Mobile asset management solutions can include one or more of these parts:
More sophisticated mobile asset management companies use the most advanced means of tracking assets available today, such as radio-frequency identification. RFID automatically captures data on each individual container and can indicate container contents without ever having to open the container. This technology is also combined with software applications that collect, maintain, track and analyze the data and provide customized reporting of the location, status, and audit and maintenance history of each asset. For example, Wayne Memorial hospital has saved 300 000$ by tracking for infusion pumps with RFID technology that can piggyback on the Wi-Fi system already in place.[3] That system is known as "Active" RFID because it uses tags that have betteries and constantly beacon. The most popular form of Asset Tracking using RFID is "passive" RFID using ISO Standard 18000-6c. The Financial Services Technology Consortium created a standard for tracking assets at bank locations see www.FSTC.org. The company that performed the work for FSTC and most of the member banks is ODIN and they have a specialty RFID Asset Tracking Software.
Management providers typically offer flexible financing options, including pay-per-use, subscription or leasing models. Each financing option provides a predictable monthly asset-related expense.
The major benefits of mobile asset management include: