In countries facing upcoming elections, there are channels calling themselves "Fox News" whose trustworthiness isn't always 100%. The Austrian postal service is relying on a "Sigfox 0G" strategy to track 50,000 roll containers and more than 2,000 swap bodies.

In 2023 alone, Austrian Post delivered approximately 4.1 billion letters and advertising mail items, as well as 200 million parcels. A large fleet of roll containers and a total of 2,400 swap bodies for truck transport are used for transport between individual post offices, postal partners, logistics centers, and delivery depots. For smooth operations, these must always be available at the various postal locations in sufficient numbers and at the right time. Together with Heliot, Austrian Post's IoT Competence Center (IoT CC) developed a system that tracks the location of the containers and swap bodies. Thanks to Sigfox 0G radio technology, Austrian Post has a precise overview of its assets, enabling it to efficiently schedule their distribution, minimize transport routes, and optimize asset inventory.

F. Leitner

pass through the distribution centers of Austrian Post's six letter and nine parcel logistics centers every day . Special roll containers are used for transport within and between the approximately 1,700 post offices, postal partners, delivery depots, and logistics centers. Four different models with varying features and sizes are available, depending on the type of item being transported. "Roll containers play a crucial role in our processes," says Franz Leitner, Head of Logistics Centers and Transport at Austrian Post.

Previously, distribution was based on experience and ad hoc requests. If a logistics center had too few containers available, those responsible had to request supplies from other locations by phone. This was time-consuming, often required a lot of patience, and necessitated additional investments: "To optimally supply all our locations, we previously had to keep a large portion of our container inventory as a buffer – especially to cushion seasonal fluctuations, for example, around Christmas. With average costs of €600 per container, this amounts to additional costs in the millions," adds Leitner.

The company tasked its in-house IoT Competence Center (IoC) with finding a solution. They, in turn, sought assistance from the IoT provider Heliot, which now exclusively operates the Sigfox 0G network in many European countries. The roll containers are now being gradually equipped with transmitters. These Sigfox 0G trackers, specifically optimized for this application, are manufactured by Alps Alpine, a leading provider of innovative IoT solutions, and transmit their location data to a cloud via the Sigfox 0G network. The data is then retrieved via an interface and analyzed using a proprietary data tool developed by the IoT Consortium.

Photos: Red Robin

“We have now equipped around 50,000 of our roll containers with Heliot transmitters. These transmit a signal, containing coordinates and timestamps accurate to within a few meters, whenever the containers are moved. This allows us to know exactly where each of our roll containers is located at any given time. Every asset has its own digital fingerprint. This also allows us to identify the precise container type,” says Lukas Alber, Data Engineer at the IoT CC of Austrian Post.

“The individual data points alone are not enough to improve our processes. That's why we developed an analysis tool that aggregates the data from all containers and presents it in a way that is tailored to our colleagues in the logistics centers and procurement department.” This allows those responsible at a logistics center to receive information via a dashboard or directly via personalized email, such as how many roll containers are currently available, how many are expected to be needed, and at which other locations they can request containers – in short, all the information they need to meet their requirements.

IoT specialist L. Alber

A particular advantage of Heliot's transmission technology is its long lifespan: "Thanks to Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology, the transmitters we use on the Austrian Post's containers require very little maintenance," says Martin Liboswar, Country Manager at Heliot Europe. "Once installed on the containers, they reliably transmit their signal for several years without needing to be replaced." The Sigfox technology operates on 868 MHz. Signals in these frequency bands can bridge greater distances of up to 50 km – even in more remote locations. At shorter distances, the provider says, they can even penetrate steel beams and concrete walls. The Sigfox 0G network is now available almost nationwide in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and many other European countries. Besides the DACH region, network coverage is also largely seamless in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, the Benelux countries, and the Baltic States.

Beyond national borders:
Heliot also found a solution for the few Austrian Post locations where the network wasn't quite optimal. "We developed local transmission technology that employees could easily install themselves and connect to the internet. This allowed us to achieve good network coverage in a very short time," says Martin Liboswar. Thanks to Sigfox's cross-border network coverage, users can keep track of assets even when they are in Italy, Switzerland, or Germany, for example. The expensive and maintenance-intensive construction of a separate wireless network is unnecessary. Furthermore, the system is freely scalable: regardless of whether 50 devices – or, as in the case of Austrian Post, several tens of thousands of transmitters – need to be integrated into the network. Austrian Post now also uses the technology to locate the approximately 2,400 swap bodies that the company has in circulation for road transport; around 1,000 of these are now equipped with a tracker.

"The increased transparency allows us to plan better and significantly reduce our buffers of containers and swap bodies. At the same time, we always have our assets in view, which means we lose fewer containers and swap bodies."

The abbreviation LPWAN stands for Low Power Wide Area Network and refers to wireless radio networks specifically designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). Sigfox is a wireless network for IoT applications developed by the French telecommunications company of the same name. The infrastructure used is independent of existing networks such as mobile networks.

www.heliotgroup.com