IoT-enabled Asset Management: Automation and Intelligence
In addition to the benefits asset management softwares provide, IoT-enabled asset management solutions add automation and intelligence to the system. IoT-enabled asset management solutions utilize IoT sensors, which allow companies to actively track specific information about their assets without any human involvement. These IoT sensors can be attached to assets instead of or along with more conventional asset tags (e.g. QR codes).
Use Cases for IoT-enabled Asset Management
Based on the gathered data, IoT-enabled asset management solutions can provide companies with real-time alerts, predictive analytics, automatic reporting, data insights and more. Here are some use cases for IoT-enabled asset management:
Locations:
Automatic location data, asset tracing and geofencing solutions (e.g. utilizing GPS trackers).
Usage hours:
Automatic tracking of usage hours and notifications about reached threshold values (e.g. acceleration sensors).
Warehouse inventory:
Automatic warehouse inventories without any separate inventory events (e.g. BLE beacons).
Material flows:
Automatic tracking and reporting of material flows (e.g. RFID tags).
Due to the size, price and lifetime of the sensor devices, the use cases for IoT-enabled asset management are often limited to tracking expensive and heavy equipment (trucks, shipping containers, etc.). However, technology is evolving all the time, which enables us to track smaller and less expensive equipment with IoT in the near future. We’ll cover that topic in another blog post – stay tuned!