The founder of a start-up believes he has a technology solution that can save supply chains millions of pounds.
Paul Byrne spent 12 years working at logistics giants Bibby before launching PIN IoT in May, 2018, which allows customers to track and monitor their supply chain assets in real-time.
The entrepreneur identified a problem in specific sectors like waste management, plant hire and construction, which have mobile assets dotted around the country, including skips, machinery or £10,000 containers.
Currently companies are using GPS and manual records to keep track of the assets but this is inefficient and inaccurate.
Now PIN IoT is pioneering new cellular Internet of Things technology that can be physically attached to any asset and then connected to the company’s cloud-based software platform – allowing companies to monitor the whereabouts of their assets in real-time.
Byrne told BusinessCloud: “There are hundreds of thousands of these assets dotted across the UK, and the owners have no effective means of tracking them at all. This problem runs into the hundreds of millions of pounds for the UK economy every year. Not only can these assets get wrong, but they also get damaged.
“Fundamentally, the owners of these fleets of assets don’t know where they are and they find it very difficult to accurately and efficiently balance the supply of these assets against the demand from their customer and make sure that things are at the right place and the right time.”
Byrne says the devices offer geo-tracking capabilities at “a very low cost” compared to traditional GPS technology.
“The underpinning technology hasn’t really existed before, but it’s here now,” he said. “GPS is hugely power-hungry and the components are very expensive both in terms of the devices but also the data plans.”
Although the start-up was established only seven weeks ago, Byrne says they’re already attracting a lot of interest and they’re now seeking investment.
“We know exactly what we’re doing, we know exactly what the market opportunity is, and we’re first to market,” he said.
“We think there’s an opportunity to create a very exciting, market-leading business.”