Dutch location data and technology platform Here Technologies is working with French IoT connectivity firm Actility to provide a LoRaWan-based tracking service for mapping and location data management.

On large warehousing sites, items can get lost or stolen. Furthermore, in cases where inventories rely on manual input, assets aren’t always stored efficiently. Finding an asset in a warehouse and optimising stock is difficult; tracking it across the world is even harder.

These are problems that Here Tracking and Actility’s ThingPark IoT network management platform can address, offering an end-to-end, customisable way to track assets and optimise the supply chain of any industrial facility. The focus is on critical assets for users’ operations such as returnable shipping assets or returnable industrial packaging, including racks, pallets, crates, tubs, bins, containers, forklifts, industrial tools and heavy mobile machinery.

The Here Tracking asset management system is based on LoRaWan, a low power, wireless protocol for wide area networks. With LoRaWan, devices can communicate with IoT applications over long-range wireless connections. It also allows for devices’ batteries to last longer, lowering the total cost of ownership.

Actility already powers more than 50 telecoms operators with LoRaWan connectivity across the globe. Its enterprise-grade LoRaWan server, ThingPark Enterprise, operates more than 35,000 network base stations worldwide.

This partnership also benefits from its Abeeway tracking devices that work both indoors and outdoors via a multi-technology geolocation system, which integrates GPS, Abeeway’s patented low-power GPS, wifi sniffing and Bluetooth Low Energy.

Here Tracking takes Abeeway trackers’ indoor positioning capabilities one step further with Here Venue Maps and radio mapping application. Venue Maps can be used to map the inside and outside of any industrial facility accurately, be it a warehouse or a factory. The Here Indoor Radio Mapper application allows for the development of a custom radio map of any given site for wifi and BLE technologies.

With Here Tracking, assets can not only be tracked on public roads, railway tracks or ships globally but also on warehouse floors and within private yards with improved accuracy.

“With Here Tracking as a foundation, we can now offer our customers one single interface to manage all their devices,” said Olivier Hersent, CEO of Actility. “This will dramatically improve their lifecycle management as all costs related to lost item replacement or search for misplaced items are now becoming obsolete. Together, Here and Actility are offering indoor and outdoor asset tracking, seamlessly.”

Here’s professional services can customise any tracking system to fulfil the requirements of a specific client, product or industry including the development of tailored applications. Here Tracking can be connected to ERPs and transport management systems to enable extended features and custom business dashboards can be created to deliver key performance indicators.

As a result, users get a framework from which to build their asset tracking and management applications. With Actility enabling multi-country geolocation with its LoRaWan roaming hub and Here transforming location information into actionable business insights, the management of industrial assets has been made easier.

“In teaming up with Actility, we have found a trusted partner with whom we can offer full end-to-end tracking that can also be customised to fit specific customers’ needs,” said Ajatshatru Kotwal, director for product management at Here Technologies. “We are proud to be offering this with a leader in the LoRaWan space and look forward to helping customers gain enhanced visibility of their supply chains.”