5 ms·

Thought experiment: for sufficiently fragile & expensive products, attach a small black-box style "smart tag" equipped with a accelerometers. It's reset when yi

Thought experiment: for sufficiently fragile & expensive products, attach a small black-box style "smart tag" equipped with a accelerometers. It's reset when yielded to the shippers, and read when the shipment is delivered. If the recorded accelerations are out of bounds (e.g. beyond the shipper's SLAs, beyond packaging standards, etc.), then there's ready evidence of shipper abuse.

Gracana 10y ago
Simple and cheap versions of this exist: https://www.uline.com/Grp_332/Damage-Indicators https://www.uline.com/Grp_332/Damage-Indicators [edit] Uh, maybe not so cheap from this particular company. You probably could do this for less with a little electronic device.
- SapphireSun 10y ago
  I think they send you a box. You have to divide by 10 or 100 or whatever to get the real price per a unit. 5 bucks for a damage indicator for a very expensive item isn't too unreasonable. Thanks for the link, these little devices are super interesting!
  - nucleardog 10y ago
    When I've seen these it's not even "one sticker per item", there's been one attached to an entire pallet of TVs or other electronics, which is probably why the price looks a little high on a per-item basis.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  These are exactly what I had in mind. I have one on our child's car seat to see if its shock limit is exceeded so I can safely pass it on to someone else once our child outgrows it.
- woliveirajr 10y ago
  One of the items I saw costs $146 for 50 units. But the best was reading that they are delivered by truck (to avoid airplanes shocks?) And would be funny too receive a box and find that all your 50 units were activated due to their delivery:-)
  - adwn 10y ago
    The shock sensors we use are delivered "unarmed", i.e., they have a little pin that holds the sensor in place. This pin is removed the moment you expose the sticky tape to attach the shock sensor to the package.
    - woliveirajr 10y ago
      Are they ok? Reasonable price? Could you name it? Thanks :-)
      - adwn 10y ago
        "Shockwatch Dropspot". I have no data on how accurate or reliable they are.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I've been kicking around the implications of falling costs for electronics, and improvements in battery design. SOC (system on chip) computers are now in roughly the $5 range, less in cases. Costs fall by roughly an order of magnitude a decade (Moore's Law, generalised). So we're looking at a world of $5 heading to $0.50 complete system indicators, with a battery life (think an Amazon Kindle) which can easily extend weeks, possibly months. In fact the battery is probably the most expensive part of this. Simple systems could be even simpler. You can create a datalogger which notes every single acceleration noted by a package from the time it leaves the factory, down the the second. Wireless capability means it can log in and report periodically en route, whenever it finds itself within WiFi range. For sufficiently expensive goods (anything over about $100 in price), this becomes a part of the shipping package. Even if you're not getting 100% reporting at endpoint, the data trail itself is going to be sufficient to point out where and when within the delivery chain problems occur. Shippers (that is, the originator of the goods) and their insurance carriers will likely collectively have sufficient leverage to open carriers (the shipping companies -- FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) to identify where within their own process the damage occurred. Hotspots -- locations or transport segments with high-damage incidence -- will be pretty much immediately obvious. Even just a few hundred tracers would provide that information. We're headed to a world of highly inexpensive devices and if not ubiquitous, highly probably WiFi access at multiple endpoints. Self-logging of this sort seems exceptionally probably. Adding general 4GL WiFi access and even just a few minutes of data transfer capability should be possible for little more, and would allow systems to phone home directly. It would surprise me if much of this doesn't already exist.

Gracana 10y ago

Simple and cheap versions of this exist: https://www.uline.com/Grp_332/Damage-Indicators https://www.uline.com/Grp_332/Damage-Indicators [edit] Uh, maybe not so cheap from this particular company. You probably could do this for less with a little electronic device.

SapphireSun 10y ago
I think they send you a box. You have to divide by 10 or 100 or whatever to get the real price per a unit. 5 bucks for a damage indicator for a very expensive item isn't too unreasonable. Thanks for the link, these little devices are super interesting!
- nucleardog 10y ago
  When I've seen these it's not even "one sticker per item", there's been one attached to an entire pallet of TVs or other electronics, which is probably why the price looks a little high on a per-item basis.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
These are exactly what I had in mind. I have one on our child's car seat to see if its shock limit is exceeded so I can safely pass it on to someone else once our child outgrows it.
woliveirajr 10y ago
One of the items I saw costs $146 for 50 units. But the best was reading that they are delivered by truck (to avoid airplanes shocks?) And would be funny too receive a box and find that all your 50 units were activated due to their delivery:-)
- adwn 10y ago
  The shock sensors we use are delivered "unarmed", i.e., they have a little pin that holds the sensor in place. This pin is removed the moment you expose the sticky tape to attach the shock sensor to the package.
  - woliveirajr 10y ago
    Are they ok? Reasonable price? Could you name it? Thanks :-)
    - adwn 10y ago
      "Shockwatch Dropspot". I have no data on how accurate or reliable they are.

dredmorbius 10y ago

I've been kicking around the implications of falling costs for electronics, and improvements in battery design. SOC (system on chip) computers are now in roughly the $5 range, less in cases. Costs fall by roughly an order of magnitude a decade (Moore's Law, generalised). So we're looking at a world of $5 heading to $0.50 complete system indicators, with a battery life (think an Amazon Kindle) which can easily extend weeks, possibly months. In fact the battery is probably the most expensive part of this. Simple systems could be even simpler. You can create a datalogger which notes every single acceleration noted by a package from the time it leaves the factory, down the the second. Wireless capability means it can log in and report periodically en route, whenever it finds itself within WiFi range. For sufficiently expensive goods (anything over about $100 in price), this becomes a part of the shipping package. Even if you're not getting 100% reporting at endpoint, the data trail itself is going to be sufficient to point out where and when within the delivery chain problems occur. Shippers (that is, the originator of the goods) and their insurance carriers will likely collectively have sufficient leverage to open carriers (the shipping companies -- FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) to identify where within their own process the damage occurred. Hotspots -- locations or transport segments with high-damage incidence -- will be pretty much immediately obvious. Even just a few hundred tracers would provide that information. We're headed to a world of highly inexpensive devices and if not ubiquitous, highly probably WiFi access at multiple endpoints. Self-logging of this sort seems exceptionally probably. Adding general 4GL WiFi access and even just a few minutes of data transfer capability should be possible for little more, and would allow systems to phone home directly. It would surprise me if much of this doesn't already exist.