SMART
ULDS
E-commerce
drives the need
to innovate and is
driving the need for
speed-to-market by
each of us in this
sector
Steve Townes, Chairman & CEO, ACL
Airshop
and low in cost, the business
case for using Bluetooth
technology in this capacity
is very much proven, so the
focus now is on what to do
with the data collected, say
both Dumont and Townes.
“70% of IoT initiatives
in the market are not
delivering results. What
makes the 30% successful
is a number of factors:
meaningful use cases for the
industry; the establishment
of a standard; benefi ts for
the broader ecosystem,”
Dumont says. “That is, for
the ground handlers, shippers
and airports, and fl exible,
collaborative models that
enable adaptation to customer
demands and technological
evolution.”
Townes concurs. “Smart
ULDs are not just about
locations, status and other
facts. The huge amount of
data allows analytical decision
support for better fl eet
effi ciency, deployment and
positioning decisions, and
ultimately lower investment
levels in hard assets,” he states.
“In our own fl eet of over
50,000 ULDs, we have already
discovered higher levels of
measurable fl eet effi ciency.”
The application of the
data will be a key focus of
Unilode’s co-operation with
Nexiot, Dumont adds. “We’re
developing the back-end
system so that we’re able to do
something with this data. It’s
early stages but there is a lot of
interest.”
Future capabilities of the
technology could include
alerts to mobile devices and
opportunities for intervention.
“This is where other
companies have potentially
missed the point. We believe
we should provide this
information to the customer,
too. The information’s there,
we just have to adapt it to the
airline industry. The sky is the
limit.”
Staying competitive
While fi ve or ten years ago
lightweight was the desirable
option in ULDs, digital is now
the leading demand. Townes
comments on the driving
force behind this increase in
the uptake of ULD tracking
and monitoring. “E-commerce
is the turbo-charging factor
for smart ULDs. All customer
airlines, not just the huge
freight integrators, now
have the ability to compete
for e-commerce shipments
while answering the shipper’s
number one question: ‘Where’s
my stuff?’ E-commerce drives
the need to innovate and is
driving the need for speed-tomarket
by each of us in this
sector. The technologies are
racing,” he asserts.
Dumont agrees. “This is
what the customer wants at
the moment: control,” he
says. “Cargo changes hands
so many times, traceability
is very important. The smart
ULD gives air cargo an
opportunity to be closer to the
integrators, such as Amazon,
UPS, DHL, that have more
integrated logistics, where
they control all the parts inhouse.”
This technology will
give shippers the reassurance
to use freight forwarders, and
give air cargo a competitive
edge, he stresses.
Feedback thus far is
positive, he continues. “Users
of the technology have been
able to locate lost units and
save cost. The visibility is
positive and this is just an
early assessment of what the
technology can do. The full
scale of benefi t will be realised
more gradually,” he concludes.
With the technology
and the benefi ts both wellestablished,
therefore, uptake
of the digital ULD is growing
rapidly – and there’s every
indication that smart is
soon to become the industry
standard.
ALTERNATIVE
TECHNOLOGIES
With its long battery life, low cost,
and a radial range of 100-150
metres, Bluetooth is very much the
technology of choice in ULD tagging
at the moment. Because of its
range, BLE can constantly scan the
contents of an area so that ULDs are
monitored in real time; it can also
cope with cluttered environments,
such as warehouses full of metal
containers, and can be programmed
not to transmit on aircraft.
Other technologies are
available, however. Alongside the
well-known alternative of RFID, a
few emerging technologies that
could have potential in ULD tracking
include NB-IoT and LoRaWAN.
NB-IoT, or Narrowband IoT, supports
two-way communications and is
designed specifi cally for a Low
Power Wide Area network. It is
low cost, has a long battery life
and high connection density.
LoRaWAN is a Low Power Wide
Area Networking protocol which
allows low-powered devices
to communicate with Internetconnected
applications over long
range, wireless connections.
While BLE is the most
proven technology at present, the
emergence of hybrid systems as
alternative technologies mature is
within the realms of possibility.
Jettainer will soon begin a proof of concept
project to tag 2,000 of AA Cargo’s Jettainer
ULDs with CORE-TT BLE tags
48 June 2019 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
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