Capabilities and essence of cargo monitoring
An increasing number of clients of transport and logistics companies are realizing that these enterprises represent not only themselves in the eyes of delivery recipients, but also – and perhaps primarily – the cargo shippers, often serving as the only form of personal contact with the recipient. It is no coincidence that among the most frequently cited and applied criteria for evaluating carriers by their clients are: average order fulfillment time (considered by 90% of companies), acceptable order fulfillment delay (83%), and the percentage of damage (85%). Since the goal of working with a carrier is not so much to deliver the cargo to the recipient (naturally at a reasonable, justified, though not necessarily the lowest cost), but to deliver the cargo on time and in an unimpaired state, issues of delivery quality become equally important. This includes the aforementioned delivery time, punctuality, and cargo safety. Although the percentage of cargo damage may seem small – in domestic transport and on the Poland-abroad route, this percentage is about 0.16%, which means that on average, one and a half shipments are damaged per 1,000 transported. Meanwhile, in transport on the abroad-Poland route, this percentage is 0.10%, which results in damage to one out of every 1,000 shipments. However, this percentage significantly affects the assessment of transport service quality and the image of suppliers in the eyes of recipients. As this year’s customer satisfaction surveys in the TSL industry indicate: “…whether an operator is ideal – according to clients – is still decided by two factors: transporting shipments in an intact state (significance level of 4.83 points out of 5 possible) and meeting agreed deadlines (4.81 points)”. For this reason, cargo safety throughout the entire transport process becomes, apart from price and delivery punctuality, a fundamental criterion for choosing a logistics service provider.
The client wants to be sure that their cargo will be delivered on time, but also – and more importantly – in the same condition as at the moment of shipment. Providing the client with extensive mechanisms for monitoring their shipments, as well as enabling access to information about them and their condition, can be a very important element of a carrier’s market offer. On the other hand, the client/shipper themselves can be the initiator and user of these mechanisms, especially in terms of monitoring cargo condition. Monitoring, as a tool used to protect cargo, can be understood as any method of observing the cargo regarding its condition, transport or storage conditions, and location. It can be continuous or discrete, with the task of obtaining information about the cargo. Obtaining this information can, among other things, significantly support compensation claims in the event of cargo damage. Monitoring understood in this way constitutes an extremely broad area of consideration. We are talking about monitoring the location and condition of cargo during transport, transshipment work, all cargo handling, warehousing, or storage itself. At each of these stages, there is a need for control and supervision, resulting from the duty of care for the cargo. Consequently, concepts and terms appear here such as: cargo tracking and track & trace systems, traceability, cargo condition control, automatic identification, and a range of technologies serving them: barcodes, RFID, radio communication, GPS/GPRS, GSM, databases and systems managing them, etc. The article will address issues concerning only the monitoring or control of cargo condition. A client, by entrusting cargo to a transport or logistics company, sets requirements regarding the appropriate quality and conditions in which it will be handled. An excellent solution enabling the control of transport and storage conditions for cargo are so-called “transport indicators”. Indicators, also known as indicators, are relatively little known in Poland. In use, one can encounter a number of different terms regarding this type of product. They are referred to as indicators, labels, and even identified with the concept of active or “smart” packaging.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 3/2008.