by Harriette Halepis / guest author

For many months now, various transportation companies across the globe have been using GPS tracking in order to ensure the safety, departure, and arrival of goods. While many knew that using GPS trackers within the transportation industry would prove to be useful, few could estimate just how useful these devices would actually be.

Nestle is one of the largest companies in the world with locations spread throughout the globe, and it also happens to be one company that wouldn’t send out any shipment without the help of GPS trackers. Joseph Aguilar is the Director for Supply Chain Management of Nestle Philippines Inc; and he also happens to be one of the first supply chain management directors within the Philippines to use GPS tracking equipment.

Aguilar believes that “…by adopting a solution that can help mitigate risks, we (they) are not only helping… company deliverables, but…business partners manage their risks better and bring down their incidental transport costs.” So, how can a company such as Nestle be so sure that their products are safe during transport? Essentially, “…when a GPS tracker goes offline, it is an indication that something is wrong.” When a signal cannot be found, a monitoring team attempts to make contact with the truck in order to ensure that the cargo is safe.

Aguilar told the Philippine Star that he believes the response time from authorities (in the case of a hijacking) has been excellent. In most instances, authorities are quick to respond to calls of distress from companies that cannot locate a truckload of goods. Since both drivers and thieves now know that most trucks are equipped with GPS tracking devices, hijacking incidences have been lowered.

Even though a GPS tracking device can’t save every truckload, these small devices have saved many loads of precious cargo from disappearing. At the moment, GPS tracking devices aren’t perfect, but companies such as Nestle have faith that “…over time the improvements will come…” For now, the GPS devices that Nestle is using have proven to be more than useful, they are also saving the company a large amount of money.

Tags: GPS, GPS tracking

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 3:00 pm and is filed under GPS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.