Reelables launched its new 5G Smart Labels, what is said to be the only printable 5G label solution in the world for logistics providers, cargo forwarders, and retailers to track shipments at the piece level as they move through the supply chain.
“This is a major breakthrough when it comes to supply chain visibility and automation,” says Brian Krejcarek, CEO and co-founder of Reelables. “Achieving mass production and pervasive deployment of these thin film wireless smart labels will change how businesses track items, reduce theft and loss, and demonstrate accountability to their customers. We are excited to bring this to market now so retailers and manufacturers can start printing these labels at scale and lighting up under-utilized LPWAN network capacity with a killer application: tracking the billions of shipments that are made every year around the world.”
Key takeaways:
- For the very first time, the label itself functions as the tracking device connected to a cellular network. It's also an industry-first in the field of printed electronics to fabricate an active LPWAN device with coated zinc batteries that share a common paper-thin wireless circuit.
- Reelables labels automatically collect actual location data from the cellular network data and trigger events the moment a shipment arrives or departs a warehouse or waypoint, or an exception is detected. They also generate inventory counts, providing a complete warehouse audit nearly every minute or less.
- The underlying technology is a reel-to-reel, thin-film manufacturing process that enables Reelables to make ultra-thin and wireless circuits into smart labels. The initial offering is a chipset level integration of NB-IoT, with LTE-M to soon follow as part of the 5G family of LPWAN technologies.
