By Lim Zeng Hao
Whenever you make a purchase from an e-commerce website like Lazada or Taobao, you trigger a cascade of events along a complex and international supply chain. Your order will have to be consolidated, packaged and delivered to your doorstep within a specified number of days, failing which you may lodge a complaint with the supplier.
Getting goods to where they need to be, in a timely fashion, is no easy feat. The process is largely carried out by logistics companies which provide services like warehousing and transportation. For these companies, fleet management—the coordination of transport vehicles—is a key part of operations. Efficient route planning and optimised load per vehicle can go a long way towards reducing operating costs.
“Many logistics companies have a need to track their vehicles—trucks, lorries, ships and so on—across geographical borders,” said Mr Sebastian Lau, International Account Manager, MVNO and OTT Services at BICS, an international connectivity provider based in Singapore. “BICS realised that this was an opportunity for us to develop an end-to-end fleet management system to help these companies improve their workflow.”
Instead of building the system independently from scratch, Mr Lau decided to raise an innovation challenge on the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) Open Innovation Platform (OIP). “Having identified an industrial need, we decided to invite other firms with the relevant expertise to join us in co-developing a solution,” he said.
Playing to their strengths
By matching problem owners to problem solvers, OIP aims to accelerate digital innovation through collaboration, with financial incentives put up by the problem owners themselves. In this case, the prize money sponsored by BICS was US$10,000.
Responding to BICS’ innovation call was East-West Innovative Solutions (EWIS) Asia, a business development consultancy firm specialised in bringing technologies into the Asia-Pacific market. Mr Patrick Veron, Managing Director of EWIS, felt confident that his company could help BICS achieve its innovation goals.
EWIS’ proposal revolved around the use of connected devices that can be installed on vehicles and goods to relay information about their location over wireless networks. Combined with BICS’ ability to provide stable and comprehensive wireless connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region, this meant that vehicles and goods could be tracked and traced in real time, in multiple countries.
“In addition to location tracking, we can add different features to our devices, depending on the goods that you’re transporting. For example, you may want to make sure that nobody opens the door of the truck—then you may need light sensors. Or for certain sensitive goods or food, you may want to monitor their temperature over time,” Mr Veron explained. Hence, these connected devices ultimately raise the level of visibility and trust in the supply chain.
Finding the perfect fit
During the process of developing a proof-of-concept under OIP, the two companies had to be nimble and adjust the parameters of the proposed solution. For example, EWIS’ initial proposal outlined the use of ultrawide-band frequency as a means of communication among devices. This was eventually switched to a 3G/4G-based communication protocol after further discussions.
BICS and EWIS are now carrying out a live trial of the tracking system on some land vehicles travelling between Singapore and Malaysia. BICS is looking to evaluate how the tracking devices synergise with their international roaming services to deliver information accurately in real time.
Reflecting on the progress both companies have made on the project, Mr Lau noted that IMDA’s OIP team has been very supportive in getting the collaboration off the ground and into its current stage of development. “We didn’t have to source for partners on our own, and the OIP team also helped us to finalize the problem statements to make them very clear so as to attract the right problem solvers. After we chose EWIS as our innovation partner, IMDA also helped to facilitate the planning, execution and testing of the technology,” Mr Lau said.
Mr Veron agreed, adding that “I think this solution exemplifies the spirit of the OIP initiative, where we use technology to deploy new solutions for everyday problems.”
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