Even before the current COVID-19 crisis, wireless communication technology was making headlines. Much of the recent interest has focused on 5G mobile data networks that are being rolled out in many countries. 5G promises a host of benefits for end users, businesses, and telecommunications systems operators alike, including higher speeds, greater capacity, and tailored services for a new generation of smart connected devices. However, beyond 5G, progress across a wide range of different wireless communication technologies is now creating new opportunities for logistics to improve visibility, enhance operational efficiency, and accelerate automation (Wifi, Bluetooth, RFID, NFC, LPWAN, LPGAN, etc.) .

It will be essential to identify the most appropriate use cases for new wireless technologies and then build a robust business case for each. The next vital step is to select the right combination of technologies to achieve business objectives and decide how to source and run new hardware, infrastructure, and services. And it will be critically important to adapt the organization’s capabilities, business processes, and culture.

“Our own sector, logistics, will be both a major beneficiary of the IoT-enabled digital revolution and an enabler of it.”

While much of the forecast growth will be achieved using technologies that are already familiar to many of us, truly universal connectivity will require approaches that can offer new capabilities, including higher capacity, greater reach, faster speeds, better energy efficiency, and lower costs. Every category of next-generation wireless technology is likely to find its place in the world of logistics.

Large-scale connectivity is an extraordinary technological and social success story. While IoT is not new in logistics, with 20 billion connected devices already in use globally, this story is still only just beginning. A myriad of technologies (RFID, NFC, BLE, Wi-Fi, 5G, LPWANs, LPGANs, etc.) are simultaneously advancing at a rapid rate, which are also cost effective and increasingly ubiquitous. They are now becoming more accessible which suddenly opens up vast opportunities for the development of applications and use cases at an unprecedented rate.

They will help companies address long-standing challenges such as poor end-to-end visibility across networks. They will play a critical role in the sector’s efforts to improve efficiency through greater automation of both planning and execution. They could even enable the creation of entirely new processes, services, and business models.

“The top three priorities identified shaping visibility strategies are end-to-end transportation visibility, inventory visibility, and the implementation of supply chain data analytics.”

In a future where everyone and everything is online everywhere, three key things will become possible for the logistics industry:

• Total Visibility: Every shipment, logistics asset, infrastructure, and facility will be connected thanks to widely available networks and inexpensive high-performance sensors. This will enable highly efficient automation, process improvement, swifter and more transparent incident resolution, and – ultimately – the best service quality for both B2B and B2C customers.
• Wide-Scale Autonomy: All autonomous vehicles, whether indoor robots or logistics vehicles on public roads, rely on ultra-fast, reliable wireless communication to navigate and traverse their worlds effectively. While these solutions are on the rise today, next-generation wireless will be one key enabler driving their widespread use and moving the world to autonomous supply chains.
• Perfecting Prediction: With so many things online, the volume, velocity, and variety of data that we collect will triple the big data already being generated today. The continued progress of machine learning systems and artificial intelligence paired with the ultra-low latency of next generation-wireless means that data-driven prediction systems for forecasting, delivery timing and routing may no longer be constrained by latency and performance of wireless networks. 

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