Asset tracking is simple: put a tag on the asset, gather location events, and chart them on a dashboard.
It should be noted, that in practice it is often anything but.
A device might announce that an asset was seen in a manufacturing zone, but that does not indicate if the asset is available for use, reserved for a specific customer, under repair, and so on.
This means that asset tracking is actually an integration task that goes beyond just the location data.
There is More to Asset Tracking Than Location Data
- A Tracking Event Is Not Operational State
Let’s imagine that there is an IoT device, which emitted an event that declared that a certain asset was observed in a manufacturing zone.
This is useful, because now we know where the asset is (or was, when the event was generated). However, the device does not say if the asset is available for use, needs to be maintained, was received into inventory, or any other condition like this.
To get this operational intelligence about assets, it is essential that the events coming from the tracking system correlate with the business logic and inventory control processes.
- A Practical Architecture
There are usually four logical layers in an asset visibility system: Device layer to read the observations, ingestion layer to capture and enrich the tracking events, integration layer to bring the observations into the relevant systems (inventory, maintenance, ERP), and presentation/dashboards/analytics layer.
The structure of the layers would vary depending on the context, infrastructure, and tools available.
However, it is of absolute importance that the raw observations are separated from the inferred operational state.
- Data Quality Comes Before Predictive Analytics
Duplicate assets, missing and late observations, incorrect timestamps, and stale asset records are just some of the issues, which can derail an entire pilot if not handled by data engineers.
In short, a model will always give correct predictions based on incorrect data.
Before trying to apply machine learning to any asset tracking data, it is essential to standardize asset identifiers, make sure that events are ingested, enrich them with descriptive attributes (timestamps, zones, etc.), and determine which database contains the source of truth for each attribute.
It is also extremely important to understand the difference between where an asset was (as per the last observation) and where it is now (as per the current recorded value).
- When Should You Use AI?
When building an asset tracking application, it is important to remember that deterministic rules often perform better than ML rules at solving well-defined problems.
If the objective is to simply alert that an asset has moved somewhere it was not supposed to (outside of a manufacturing zone), a simple rule will suffice.
ML algorithms might provide more insight if the question to answer is: “How often do these movements happen, and what patterns do they follow?”
More specifically, ML can help train demand forecasts for certain equipment or categories of assets, if there is a sufficient dataset to train the model on.
- Make Alerts Actionable
An alert makes sense only when it specifies what is happening and to which asset. It can give more details about the event or condition that triggered it, as well as recommend who is responsible for resolving it.
For instance, it does not really make sense to alert someone that an asset moved somewhere if this movement was expected (e.g., part of a planned transfer). This also brings us to the next point.
- Measure the Outcome
Most importantly, make sure that the outcome of the pilot justifies the cost and time needed to implement it.
For example, if you were trying to reduce the time needed to find an asset, measure this metric both before and after your system goes live.
Depending on the application, such metrics could be time to find assets, inventory reconciliation score, utilization rate, number of actions taken on an alert, or percentage of false-positive alerts.
Always make sure that the change you witness is actually the result of your pilot and not some other improvement happening at the same time.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, building an asset visibility system is not just about tracking tags and presenting this information on a dashboard.
It is an exercise in operational intelligence, which brings together data from the physical world (IoT) with business logic and rules. It creates value by applying AI to large amounts of data to find new patterns and insights, and by using applications to turn this information into action items.
We believe that it is critically important to create systems that provide order and actionable insight, rather than trying to turn everything into data.
For more information on the development of industrial AIoT ventures and their applications in the real world, please visit our blog at Aperture Venture Studio.
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