On average I am sure most of us get some Internet product delivered on a regular basis. Some may come from around the corner. Many end up coming from many miles away. Who knows what happens from the moment you place the order until it ends up in your hot hands. There’s the warehouse picking and packing process. Then tagging and delivery to a distro point. Then the shipping via truck or plane or both. And the driver on the receiving end of course. Your ‘new’ product undergoes quite an experience before even getting opened. Returns of broken products due to the delivery products cost retailers billions of dollars a year and cost buyers plenty of time and hassle.
Cambridge Consultants in the UK just announced creation of a device that might help us understand the extent of our parcel abuse and perhaps help online retailers realize the source of broken product problems. DropTag is designed to record the severe bumps that happen along the way and enable trackers to evaluate the progress along the way. The device communicates to an app via Bluetooth within a 50m reach and can be integrated anywhere along the delivery process. So at a receiving warehouse personnel could check the mid-delivery status of a parcel and ensure that severe – break-worthy bumps – have not occurred. DropTag can track activity for a couple weeks on one small battery. And units could be reused after battery replacement. Cost is anticipated to be less than $2. If you talk to online retailers, I am sure that the ability to find the source of drops and breaks and potentially prevent damaged goods from being delivered quickly lowers costs. And theoretically it could be used to track luggage abuse on airlines too. Stay tuned for progress on DropTag and who knows, maybe a future delivery of yours will show up with this tracking innovation
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