I report emerging technologies in logistics nearly every day. This year, I've seen a noticeable uptick in genAI and visibility tools across transportation and warehousing that will continue to grow. But what else is next in the sector? From 5G and infrastructure-free tracking to new AI tools for automation, Brian Krejcarek, co-founder and CEO of Reelables, lays out 5 trends for 2025 and how businesses can best optimize and adapt their supply chains next year:
- Infrastructure-free tracking– Increasingly businesses are looking for a solution that does not require the hassle and expense of installing RFID or Bluetooth gateways. Cellular-based tracking has the promise of delivering a gateway-free infrastructure solution. With the ability to track more items in an infrastructure-free environment, more data will be available and collected throughout a package’s supply chain journey. Until now, technology hasn’t enabled infrastructure-free tracking at an economical price point for most products moved. That will change in the year ahead and has the potential to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply chain processes greatly.
- Traceability capabilities– New regulations require more rules and guidelines on traceability and the ability to track a product and its raw ingredients throughout the entire supply chain. Temperature is a critical factor in traceability and the industry is moving towards "smart packaging" with integrated sensors to monitor temperature and other conditions in real-time, enhancing traceability and safety through advanced data collection.
- Divergence– The pandemic years ago triggered this, making it complicated with higher rates and the increased digitization of shipping and logistics companies. Enter 5G cellular labels, which can help companies and brands track their shipments such as high-end goods while selling to different countries and can easily catch pricing differences, especially overseas. Companies want to know where their shipments are going and where they shouldn’t be. The cold chain is also impacted because pharmaceuticals as medical treatments are sold at different prices to different parts of the world, which must be monitored closely.
- Edge processing– Per-piece track-and-trace data, accounting for the enormity of shipments made every year, will quickly overwhelm any backhaul telemetry using cellular connections. This has the potential to outweigh the per-unit economics gained from per-piece visibility. Therefore, processing this data onsite at the network edge, at depots and warehouses, enables smart packaging of the data. For instance, instead of sending raw data about the location of each shipment, just the event conditions (such as an enter or exit event) or alarms are transferred to the cloud, saving both the bandwidth expense, and also growing cloud compute costs.
- Automation and AI– One of the most exciting opportunities is automation and AI applications that can take advantage of the immense and accurate data generated by tracking shipments worldwide. Smart labels can help route shipments in ways never before possible by reporting exact locations in real-time, enabling other systems to reroute and aggregate shipments dynamically without slow, legacy rules-based systems and human intervention. Shipments could also be autonomous and guide themselves through complex, robot-driven, artificial intelligence-enabled supply chains.
In 2025, technology will continue to redefine the supply chain. The trends outlined by Krejcarek will work to empower companies to anticipate demand shifts, mitigate disruptions and operate more sustainably. As these technologies advance, they offer a unique opportunity for supply chain leaders to not only improve efficiency and reduce costs but also foster resilience and innovation well into the future.
