From Beer Kegs To Porta Potties: Tracking Returnable Assets With Blockchain
Every day, billions of little-noticed items make our lives easier, more enjoyable, and more convenient: items like the racks that hold houseplants at retail stores; portable toilets at an outdoor concert; and the countless bins, totes, and pallets that carry items from one point to another around the world.
These humble items are so prevalent in modern life that leasing and managing them is a massive global industry in its own right. Organizations with complex supply chains may have millions of these returnable or rental assets, representing billions of dollars in value. Tracking these assets effectively is essential if companies want to avoid paying penalties for losing them, minimize rental fees, and otherwise optimize their utilization and return on investment. Accurate, real-time information about these assets is key.
Real-time accuracy of assets is what TrackX delivers. At TrackX, we develop software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for tracking returnable and reusable assets such as beer kegs, intermediate bulk containers, chemical containers, and plastic pallets. We’re constantly innovating our offerings to better serve our customers in industries as diverse as transportation, food and beverage, brewery, healthcare, high tech, hospitality, mining, agriculture, horticulture, manufacturing, and government.
Recently, we integrated Amazon Managed Blockchain in our Global Asset Management for Enterprises (GAME) platform. The decentralized ledgers in blockchain help improve tracking of returnable and reusable assets across a complex network of stakeholders, which are often distributed globally. Building traditional, centralized applications would have meant that our stakeholders were unable to work independently. Also, setting up a blockchain network of our own would be time consuming and cumbersome. As CEO of TrackX, I see tremendous opportunity for blockchain technology to transform global supply chains. The GAME platform along with Amazon Managed Blockchain is helping make that potential a reality.