Keeping tabs

ProxTrak

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 9/1/1998

The number of tracking and tracing products available today means shippers now have a wide variety of options to help them collect, manage, and transmit tracking data more effectively.

Ten years ago, tracking and tracing products were a rarity, but it's a very different story today. The development of operational strategies like Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing, Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), and Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) means that shippers, carriers, and their mutual customers need to know where inventory is at all times. And they need to get that information quickly and

accurately. Fortunately, their needs are being met by a wide variety of tracking and tracing products that are on the market today. Here is just a sampling of some of the newest of these products.

HID Corp. has developed "ProxTrak" asset-management tags and readers. The ProxTrak system can link information about bar-code terminals, portable computers, and other corporate assets to a particular employee. Employees wear one of HID's proximity cards as a badge. These cards incorporate either the ProxTrak or an IBM Asset ID tag.

When the employee exits through a portal protected by a ProxTrak reader, the access-control system matches the tagged item to the tagged individual, determining automatically if that individual is authorized to remove the property from the premises. If the system identifies a removal that has not been authorized, it notifies security personnel.