Advantages of License-Plate-Number Container Tracking

Unlike ERP systems, which track inventory by location, BellHawk tracks containers of material using license-plate-number (LPN) container tracking methods.  The advantages of the use of these methods by BellHawk are that they:

1. Are necessary for most work-in-process materials tracking application.
2. Can track the quantity of raw, work-in-process, intermediate, or finished materials in each container and its location in real-time.
3. Can track the location of  serialized or individually barcoded items in real-time.
4. Can track attributes for each container or individually tracked item such as lot number, expiration date , size, color, dimensions, and quality control inspection status.
5. Work at multiple geographic locations, in production areas, in multiple warehouses, and on-site, in the field.
6. Uniformly track raw, intermediate, and finished goods materials, as well as assets and work-in-process materials.
7. Avoid changing barcode labels whenever the contents of a container are changed.
8. Enable permanent tracking barcodes to be attached to bins, totes, and trolleys used to hold materials but still supports the use of temporary barcodes on containers that can be discarded.
9. Can perform work-in-process data collection with easy-to-use pre-printed rolls of license-plate tracking barcodes without needing the use barcode label printers. But enable use of barcode printers, when needed, for special labels with human readable information.
10. Can use container data to quickly find materials for picking and then prevent picking errors.
11. Can track materials in nested containers and use this data to generate ASNs for supply chain integration.
12. Enable tracking the quality control status of the material in each container and preventing use or shipment of defective materials.
13. Enable capturing materials traceability history as to which materials went into which product.

LPN container tracking is now the standard for tracking materials in the Global supply chain. It is the basis of the GS1 (Global Standards One) standards for barcode and RFID tracking as well as having been adopted by US Government agencies such as the FDA, FAA, DOT, and many others, as well as by the European Union and Chinese Government. It is also used by organizations such as FedEX and UPS to track the delivery of their parcels.

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