DESRIST'10 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Global Perspectives on Design Science Research
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Tracking and tracing services are of great importance for the transportation and logistics industry and have become standard services for most logistics providers. Senders as well as consignees use this service in order to align their business and manufacturing processes with the respective forwarding activities. Within the field of parcel and expedited logistics, the use of standard parcel sizes enables a comparatively simple technical implementation of tracking and tracing by the use of bar code systems. However, for carriers of general cargo this issue can become rather challenging out of two reasons. First, shipments have all assumable sizes and shapes and second, forwarders are very often organized in open logistics chains or networks. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for automated tracking and tracing of general cargo based on cellular positioning and radio frequency identification (RFID). Based on the results of a field test of a leading European logistics provider, this paper discusses the opportunities arising from this approach as well as its future potential.