The tracking of high value assets is an ongoing business problem for many companies. In particular, the tremendous volume of goods flowing through a transportation system on any given day creates a significant logistical challenge. As a result, tracking and visibility systems play an integral part in most transportation systems by allowing both customers and transportation personnel to track the flow of goods. However, despite the existence of many prior art systems, items flowing through a transportation system are, on occasion, still delivered to a location later than expected, misdelivered to an incorrect address, and even lost or stolen somewhere along the way. These and other such mishaps can be particularly troubling when the items being shipped are considered “high-value” items, based on either their relative importance to the shipper or on their raw economic value. Examples of high-value items can include shipments of diamonds, expensive jewelry, computer chips, cars or sensitive documents, to name just a few.
For the most part, item tracking services known in the art are passive in the sense that they are generally not designed to actively address the types of problems discussed above. In other words, most solutions in the past have been inhibited by their lack of active scanning and reporting of location for each particular item moving through the transportation network. This is due in part to the fact that many items are bundled or aggregated together with other items for efficiency of shipment. As a result, many items are not physically (i.e., actually) scanned at every transportation point, which they pass through. Instead, a “logical” scan of the item is performed, meaning that if the bundled or aggregated load arrives at (or departs from) a particular location, the bundled load is scanned and the tracking data for each particular item assumed to be within that bundle is updated accordingly. This occurs despite the fact that each particular item believed to be in the bundle may not actually be present.
Thus, for example, if an item is lost, stolen, behind schedule, or misdelivered to an incorrect address, such problems may go undetected until a shipper or consignee notices the problem and calls to report it. By then, however, a substantial amount of time may have been passed, during which transportation and security personnel could have been looking into the problem. As such, the likelihood of being able to diagnose and remedy the cause of any potential problems may have been reduced.
Furthermore, while it is sometimes possible to ship an item via special shipping channels that incorporate more stringent security measures, doing so may not always be desirable. Aside from the fact that shipping an item in such a way can be substantially more expensive, the added security measures can, in some cases, create a new set of problems by drawing unnecessary attention to the item. In other words, by shipping the item via special shipping channels, the shipper may in effect be identifying the item to would-be criminals as a high value item. Thus, in some cases it may actually be safer to at least provide the appearance that the item is being shipped via “standard” means so that the item blends in and, as such, does not stand out as an item of particular value in the various shipping yards, hub locations and other transport points through which the item is likely to pass.
Therefore, an unsatisfied need exists in the industry for improved tracking and visibility systems and methods that overcome the deficiencies in the prior art, some of which are discussed above.