After decades of steady progress, the industry prepares for a flood of technology to capture and act upon real-time location of assets, people and goods.

Despite being an industry focused on the movement of goods, until very recently, the materials handling industry had flourished using a fairly basic assortment of checkpoints and transactions. Aside from time elapsed, so much of what happened in the movement of goods went unmeasured.

In its efforts to respond to unprecedented consumer demands, the industry has labored under operational holdovers from the days when folks allowed six to eight weeks for delivery. Despite incredible progress, compressing the transactions hasn’t increased visibility of the spaces in between.

A new generation of location-based data analysis tools are working to collect information about the movement of items, employees and assets. The possibilities are tremendous, leading one solution provider to boldly declare that a Holy Grail has been found. But it’s also reminiscent of some 20-year-old claims surrounding RFID. Modern spoke with industry experts to determine how the latest technologies are different, what already works and what might be coming soon.

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Source: Real-time location sees the space between – Modern Materials Handling