INDUSTRY WATCH
BLACKBERRY RADAR HAS
PROVIDED AXSUN WITH
PRECISELY THE VISIBILITY
AND CONTROL IT WAS
LOOKING FOR ACROSS
ITS ASSETS, ALLOWING
IT TO ENSURE THAT
UNAUTHORIZED USE IS NO
LONGER A CONCERN.
Axsun is responsible for
keeping some of North
America’s largest brands
stocked and supplied.
Leveraging an extensive network of
partners and contractors, it ships to
locations all over the world, including
Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Axsun prides itself on the breadth of its
services, going to great lengths to ensure
that it can meet the unique logistical
needs of each individual client.
“From the moment it was founded,
Axsun has always been intermodal, using
multiple types of transport to ensure the
most efficient delivery of freight,” said
Steve Ramescu, President at Axsun.
“We touch a lot of things on the
transportation side, including truck
brokering, logistics work, warehousing
and ocean freight. However, our biggest
focus – and where we originated – is on
the railroad.”
When asset tracking goes
off the rails
“As an intermodal service provider, when
you sign contracts with railroads, you get to
use their assets,” said Ramescu. “Because
of this, we didn’t maintain many assets of
our own in our early years, aside from a few
trucks we used for final-mile deliveries. As
time went on, we began acquiring our own
assets to better serve our clientele.”
With this growth came the need for
better visibility and control. Axsun
wanted to be able to track where
its containers were throughout their
journey. In addition to enhancing
both asset utilization and efficiency,
this would also enable increased
accountability in the management of
their assets.
“Because the railroad only goes to
certain cities, we rely on a large network
of subcontractors,” said Ramescu.
“We needed to know what those
subcontractors were doing with our
containers after their deliveries were
made. We needed the certainty that
they weren’t using our containers
without our consent or in such a way
that might create liability risks, such as
with the unauthorized transportation of
hazardous materials.”
There was also the matter of visibility
into each container’s journey along the
railroad. Traditionally, when a container
is transported via rail line, the container
is not tracked continuously. Instead,
each flatcar on a train is assigned an
RFID code, which is only read when the
train passes through certain segments of
the railway.
Unfortunately, because these RFID
codes are configured manually, they
are prone to error. There is no way of
knowing that a container is actually
where it’s supposed to be.
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENTCIO
73