Friday, March 22, 2013

The internet of bins. Connected waste bins tell when it's time to take out the trash. Truck roll avoidance!

PR/STORY >>

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: M2M, internet of things

Three more words of fantastic opportunity I would like to share this week: truck roll avoidance.

Talk to managers at service-based companies or municipalities about truck rolls and they'll cringe. Talk to them about how they could avoid truck rolls and their ear will perk up. Really.

A truck roll is when some sort of service worker is dispatched to a remote location. It could be a cable repairman, a municipal worker, a nurse. There's the wasted time of transporting the worker, the depreciation on the vehicle, and the potential for some sort of mishap. I learned about the importance of truck rolls when working at Nokia's set-top box unit: develop a set-top box that could find a way around a truck roll and operators would listen.

Here is a great example of the use of the internet of things to minimize truck rolls: connected municipal trash bins which know how full they are and actively report their status. Cities across the globe are getting smart to such ideas of smarter things.

We've all been hearing about connected things and machine-to-machine communications for the past decade now. But it's really happening. Don't throw away this opportunity.

Less wasted time:



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