Mobile asset management
Encyclopedia
Mobile asset management is managing availability and serviceability of assets used to move, store, secure, protect and control inventory
Inventory
Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...

 within the enterprise and along the supply chain
Supply chain
A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to...

 or in conjunction with service providing.

Mobile assets are e.g. of the classes of
  • returnable, reusable containers used to transport raw materials
    Material
    Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...

    , work-in-progress and finished goods through the supply chain.
  • precious tools and apparatuses used in technical services and required for proper performing such services with fully valid certification
  • any other objects of a value that justifies additional tagging for the purpose of managing the object and its availability
  • any other objects with a certification that terminates after certain time which justifies the controlled return for next inspection
  • persons under special threat on site of operation.
  • Rental companies are increasingly turning to asset tracking for all larger pieces of equipment in order to manage theft, misuse of assets and to assist in the management of Preventive maintenance
    Preventive maintenance
    Preventive maintenance has the following meanings:#The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment and facilities in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or...


Tracking mobile assets

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
  • beer
    Beer
    Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

     keg
    Keg
    A keg is a small barrel.Traditionally, a wooden keg is made by a cooper used to transport items such as nails, gunpowder., and a variety of liquids....

    s,
  • intermediate bulk container
    Intermediate bulk container
    An Intermediate bulk container is a container used for transport and storage of fluids and bulk materials. The construction of the IBC container and the materials used are chosen depending on the application, i.e...

    s (IBCs) used in the food and chemical industries,
  • racks for glass
    Glass
    Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

     and automotive
    Automobile
    An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

     parts,
  • unit load devices
    Unit Load Device
    A unit load device , is a pallet or container used to load luggage, freight, and mail on wide-body aircraft and specific narrow-body aircraft. It allows a large quantity of cargo to be bundled into a single unit. Since this leads to fewer units to load, it saves ground crews time and effort and...

     (ULDs) used in the airline
    Airline
    An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...

     industry.
  • rolling cages,
  • collapsible aluminum containers for raw materials,
  • portable surgical instruments
    Surgical instruments
    A surgical instrument is a specially designed tool or device for performing specific actions of carrying out desired effects during a surgery or operation, such as modifying biological tissue, or to provide access for viewing it. Over time, many different kinds of surgical instruments and tools...

  • medical devices in hospital
    Hospital
    A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

    s and subject of prepetitive certification.


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.

Concerns with usage of tracking mobile assets

These assets are often in the hands of third party entities (such as suppliers, customer
Customer
A customer is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services...

s, logistics
Logistics
Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...

 providers and carriers
Common carrier
A common carrier in common-law countries is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and that is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport...

) and out of sight and control of the owning entity. They usually represent a significant capital expenditure
Capital expenditure
Capital expenditures are expenditures creating future benefits. A capital expenditure is incurred when a business spends money either to buy fixed assets or to add to the value of an existing fixed asset with a useful life extending beyond the taxable year...

 for companies and their management and maintenance is resource-intensive
Factors of production
In economics, factors of production means inputs and finished goods means output. Input determines the quantity of output i.e. output depends upon input. Input is the starting point and output is the end point of production process and such input-output relationship is called a production function...

.

On average, businesses spend 5% of annual revenue
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....

 on logistics assets, and almost one-fifth of respondents spend more than 10%. 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.

Outsourcing mobile asset management

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
Cleanliness
Cleanliness is both the abstract state of being clean and free from dirt, and the process of achieving and maintaining that state.Cleanliness may be endowed with a moral quality, as indicated by the aphorism "cleanliness is next to godliness," and may be regarded as contributing to other ideals...

, maintenance
Maintenance, Repair and Operations
Maintenance, repair, and operations or maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it become out of order or broken...

, repair
Maintenance, Repair and Operations
Maintenance, repair, and operations or maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it become out of order or broken...

). These providers also study business processes within the supply chain and help optimize each process.

Methods of tracking

Different methods exist to track and manage mobile assets. Today, companies use labor-intensive manual processes to track assets between manufacturers
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 and distributor
Distributor
A distributor is a device in the ignition system of an internal combustion engine that routes high voltage from the ignition coil to the spark plugs in the correct firing order. The first reliable battery operated ignition was developed by Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. and introduced in the...

s, which can result in higher supply chain costs and processes that are less reliable due to natural human error
Human reliability
Human reliability is related to the field of human factors engineering and ergonomics, and refers to the reliability of humans in fields such as manufacturing, transportation, the military, or medicine...

. Specific identification of the container’s origin and destination is virtually impossible under this method.

Components of mobile asset management

Mobile asset management solutions can include one or more of these parts:
  • Server unit
  • Database unit
  • Wireless tags for the units
  • Illumination bases for wireless communications (GSM)
  • Locating receivers (GPS)

Asset tracking technology

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. 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
ODIN technologies
ODIN provides RFID software and solutions for the Aerospace, Government, Healthcare, Financial Services and Social Media markets.ODIN provides RFID services and RFID software....

 and they have a specialty RFID Asset Tracking Software.

Flexible pricing options

Management providers typically offer flexible financing
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

 options, including pay-per-use, subscription
Subscription business model
The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and websites....

 or leasing
Leasing
Leasing is a process by which a firm can obtain the use of a certain fixed assets for which it must pay a series of contractual, periodic, tax deductible payments....

models. Each financing option provides a predictable monthly asset-related expense.

Benefits of mobile asset management

The major benefits of mobile asset management include:
  • Improve visibility of assets in the supply chain
  • Meet compliance mandates of customers
  • Improve asset tracking and inventory control across multiple facilities
  • Reduce loss or damage of goods while in transit
  • Streamline business processes having to do with assets
  • Reduced labor cost and human error with automatic asset tracking technology
  • Reductions in theft and improvements in rental utilization

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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