AT&T is connecting a smart printable and disposable shipping label that will help businesses track the location and condition of products shipped worldwide and enable actionable decisions based on the massive amounts of data collected.

The adhesive label developed by Sony Semiconductor in Israel is activated when attached to the parcel and tracks every item shipped across the globe.

Global supply chains have come under severe pressure and disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic as business priorities and customer preferences shifted. Winter storms, port backlogs and the March backup in the Suez Canal put renewed emphasis on need for efficiencies and full visibility across the supply chain.

The smart label connects to AT&T’s secure LTE-M cellular network and sends data to the cloud to enable decisions while packages are in transit. It can be integrated with existing enterprise systems. Businesses gain visibility into every item shipped during transit and can act quickly on the data.

The entire end-to-end process can be supported through the design and integration expertise of AT&T’s IoT professional services organisation from installation to deployment and project management.

While other smart labels rely on a patchwork of connectivity through wifi, RFID and other limited coverage connections, this smart label is connected to the cloud through AT&T’s secure global cellular network.

This enables massive IoT deployments across industries and is based on a multi-year collaboration with global customers in the crop sciences and shipping logistics industries.

It all started with a customer need. Bayer’s crop science division lacked a global IoT service that could efficiently keep track of agricultural seed products once they entered the distribution channel. With millions of dollars in revenue at stake, Bayer envisioned a concept that would close the visibility gaps in the supply chain providing real-time inventory. It turned to Sony to develop and commercialise the smart label, activated on AT&T’s global cellular network to manage its supply chain with full end-to-end visibility.

“All large enterprises in the world dealing with finished goods are seeking comprehensive functional and technical solutions to solve one of the top use cases: real-time channel inventory,” said Christof Backhaus, digital lead at Bayer. “The smart label indicates how much product is in the market, from the packaging line to the end-customer. Due to the technical composition, we do not require any additional infrastructure, manual scanning or other expensive tools.”

Just about any business can use this where efficiently tracking and monitoring location and condition of products is critical, including manufacturing, raw materials, consumer products, cars and lorries, logistics, electronics, pharmaceuticals, retail, health care, food, and agriculture.

For pharmaceuticals, it can help manufacturers track sensitive products such as vaccines, where they are, when they arrive; a sensor monitors temperatures in near real time to satisfy regulatory requirements and alerts if shipments are tampered with.

It can also help to monitor product lifecycles from shipment to delivery and identify process gaps and anomalies, identifying the best distribution schedules by predicting the most efficient delivery routes.

In retail, notifications can be sent in near real time when temperatures are not meeting compliance for perishables, or if tampering and movement sensors indicate theft or if shipments go missing.

“We are proud to take a leading position in revolutionising the digital supply chain with a disruptive solution, utilising Sony’s Altair low power cellular IoT technology based on its ALT1250 chipset,” said Aviv Castro, vice president at Sony Semiconductor in Israel. “We created this in partnership with leading innovative producers of flexible electronics and printable batteries –increasing end-to-end transparency in the supply chain and making actionable decisions possible thanks to massive amounts of data.”

Robert Boyanovsky, vice president for mobility, IoT and 5G at AT&T, added: “Working with Sony, we are providing full visibility of every item shipped via the end-to-end integrated IoT smart label. Smart label promises to help businesses like Bayer realise the full potential of the IoT and global tracking to deliver improvements in revenue and cost savings and make their supply chains more efficient.”