What Is Asset Tracking?

Asset tracking refers to various means of monitoring the location of physical assets. These could be anything from vehicles to cargo to equipment, and more. It can also refer to tracking people or animals wearing tags or similar connected devices. In some cases, asset tracking involves tracking not just the location but the status or health or a particular asset. Asset tracking usually employs one or more of the following technologies, embedded in a physical device, sensor, or other object: GPS, radio-frequency identification (RFID), near-field communication (NFC), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and others. Asset tracking also refers to longstanding technologies such as UPC barcode scanning, which is still widely used. 

Why Asset Tracking?

Asset tracking is crucial to ensuring proper asset visibility in a variety of contexts, including inventory and supply chain management, logistics, systems monitoring, event management, and more. Asset tracking also is used in risk management for theft prevention and other security purposes. Asset tracking is especially critical as the quantity or value of assets increases, for example, managing a fleet of thousands of vehicles, or valuable shipping cargo.

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