Network Tracking System for Shipment Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Shippers often lack visibility into shipments due to incomplete or missing booking data from suppliers, leading to gaps in supply chain visibility and difficulties in tracking and processing shipments accurately.
Innovation Solution
A network tracking system that captures asset information from drivers before departure, associates it with shipment data, and generates tracking information using multiple sources of location data, ensuring 100% tracking across the network through localized checkpoints and automatic registration of carriers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If suppliers make carriage bookings independently, then shipping operations can proceed, but the shipper lacks visibility into the shipment
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by automatically capturing booking data from carriers and providing it back to shippers. The tracking system receives booking information, asset information, and location data from multiple sources, then feeds this information back to the shipper through a user interface, ensuring continuous visibility without interrupting the independent booking process
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a tracking system as an intermediary between the carrier and the shipper. This intermediary automatically collects booking data, asset information, and location data from carriers and other sources, then presents this information to shippers, eliminating the need for direct data exchange while maintaining visibility
2Device complexity
If manual tracking processes are used, then implementation is simple, but tracking accuracy and completeness deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs self-service mechanisms where carriers and other participants automatically provide booking data, asset information, and location data through integrated applications and sensors. The tracking system automatically processes and associates this information without requiring manual data entry or intervention, improving accuracy while maintaining ease of use through automated workflows
Solution Approach 2:
The tracking system is designed as a universal platform that handles multiple functions: collecting booking data, capturing asset information, integrating location data from various sources, and providing visibility to multiple users. This multi-functional approach consolidates what would otherwise require separate manual processes into a single automated system
3Loss of time
If booking data is not collected systematically, then data collection effort is reduced, but supply chain visibility gaps increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by capturing booking data, asset information, and establishing tracking associations at the beginning of the shipping process. The tracking system is set up in advance to automatically collect and associate data from multiple sources, ensuring visibility is established before shipping operations begin and eliminating the need for later data collection efforts
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are systems, apparatuses, methods, and computer readable medium, and circuits for tracking shipment services. A method includes: obtaining, from a mobile computing device, a shipment information associated with a booking of a load and asset information corresponding to a physical asset associated with transport of the load; identifying one or more sources of location data for the physical asset based on the asset information; and generating tracking information for the load by associating the one or more sources of location data for the physical asset with the shipment information associated with the booking of the load.