How Track, Trace, and Big Data Are Shaping Modern Logistics

Guest posting by Dr. William Oliver Hedgepeth Program Director, Government Contracts and Acquisition at American Public University

Who in your organization tracks goods? Who in your organization traces the path of the goods? Tracking and tracing goods is not the same thing. These two terms help define complex functions in reverse logistics, logistics, transportation, and supply chain management processes.

The study of logistics, reverse logistics, transportation, and supply chain management involves learning how to use billions of pieces of data. Data includes everything from tracking and tracing of products to the credit card used for purchases.

When I was teaching logistics and reverse logistics at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), tracking was a common word. Tracks were the paw or hoof prints in the snow or tundra or the scat or yellow snow left by an animal. A man’s snowshoe print was a clear track of a person walking through the wilds. A track is a mark left on the ground and can be permanent or not so permanent. 

A track is also a signal that has been captured from reading a barcode on a product. Or it could be the radio frequency identification (RFID) code scanned by an antenna of a tractor trailer passing through a toll both on a highway. A product’s track is the footprint left at a certain point in time.

Most people generally define a supply chain as moving goods from point A to point B. The path between those two points is a track. That track may be a shelf space in a warehouse, a shelf space in a grocery store, or a collection box in an Amazon warehouse.

Next, we turn to the trace. When we trace a set of footprints we get a map of where all those footprints have gone. If we are tracing the path of a dog mushing team in Alaska, we can readily see the paw prints and sled prints in the snow.  You can draw a trace on a map.  

In logistics, a critical trace system for goods that are traveling by truck is the interstate highway system. A trace can be just a road or it could be a set of yellow lines in a warehouse along which a forklift moves a pallet of cargo from a bin to the inside of a tractor trailer. In the future, a trace could be a drone picking up a box of shoes from an Amazon distribution center, flying up and a straight line at 400 feet to your Amazon landing pad at home, and vertically landing.

Air cargo deliveries around the US and the world also create a trace, as do cargo ships and goods that travel by rail. The hidden pipelines that lace the US carrying oil, gas, and water are also a trace, an underground road for the flow of liquid goods.

Who cares about tracking and tracing a product in the work place of logistics, supply chain, or transportation? “The ability to track and trace not only the product but the item number, and possibly a history of birth to death movements, adds a new metrical dimension of in-transit visibility to an item.” (Hedgepeth, 2007, p. 8).  How to best  define the required data for use is dependent on knowing if that data is to be used for creating a track, a place where the product resides, or a trace, a map of how long and where that product moves along a complex network of supply chains.

Who determines which data to collect and which data is to remain a permanent and pertinent part of a product and that complex network of tracing is often a hidden part of tracking and tracing goods. Technology is still evolving beyond the bar code and RFID tags to produce such data. But it is the job of the logistician to understand track and trace analysis and determine the insights needed for the most cost-effective handling of goods.

References:

Brown, L. (Ed). (1993). The New Oxford Shorter Dictionary. Clarendon Press. Oxford.

Hedgepeth, W. O. (2007). RFID Metrics: Decision making tools for today’s supply chains. CRC Press. Boca Raton

About the Author: Dr. Oliver Hedgepeth is the program director for Government Contracts and Acquisition at American Public University (APU). He is the former program director of Reverse Logistics Management and Transportation and Logistics Management. Prior to joining APU, Dr. Hedgepeth was a tenured associate professor of Logistics and chair of the Logistics Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His book, RFID Metrics, was published in 2007 by CRC Press and is in revision.

Road Deterioration Is More Than Just a Pothole

By Brenda Rector, Faculty Member, Transportation and Logistics Management at American Public University

Winter is here, and so is pothole season. When roads are frozen and flooded, the chances of the pavement breaking open are exponentially higher. The issue worsens when roads are allowed to deteriorate.

The Mississippi River is swelling to record levels and there have been many mandatory evacuations ordered. During the second week of January, winter’s nasty side has finally come the eastern United States after a very mild start to winter.

Why should drivers care about flooding or winter weather when taking to the road? A pothole can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. The website www.pothole.info details how the El Niño weather pattern of 2016 is causing havoc with many states' road maintenance budgets. Among the facts listed, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) believes it would cost 2.7 trillion dollars to repair the current issues with the highway and bridge infrastructure.

The community, as a whole, has gotten frustrated with the lack of concern and the lack of money to repair potholes and other infrastructure issues. In some communities, local news stations offer special call in numbers for consumers to report potholes and other road issues. Some citizens in money-challenged states have made repairs to streets themselves.

Potholes are not just a U.S. citizen problem. Potholes cost the trucking industry millions of dollars each year. After a semi-tractor hits a deep pothole, the firm can pay an estimate of nearly a thousand dollars for realignment of the drive wheels of the tractor.

We have seen some movement in legislature in recognition of the pothole problem. In North Carolina, lawmakers have recently vowed to fix any driver-reported pothole within 48 hours of reporting. It will be nice to see how many states will follow suit. It would save the trucking industry millions of dollars of repairs and billions in lost employee downtime and revenues.    

About the Author

Brenda Rector is an adjunct professor for the Transportation and Logistics Management Program of American Public University. She has been in the military and civilian transportation and logistics industry for nearly 15 years. Professor Rector is in the dissertation phase of her doctorate in organizational management and is set to have her doctorate later this year.