LoRa Alliance® and GS1 in Europe Enter Liaison Agreement to Explore Combining GS1 Supply Chain Standards with LoRaWAN®
Initial pilot successfully leverages LoRaWAN and RFID standards to reduce maintenance costs and improve operational efficiencies in the railway industry
Fremont, Calif. – March 3, 2021 – The LoRa Alliance®, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN® standard for Internet of Things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), and GS1 in Europe, a not-for-profit organization that develops and maintains global standards for business communication to improve efficiency, safety and visibility of the supply chain in a variety of sectors, today announced a formal liaison agreement to explore adding LoRaWAN networks as an available carrier technology to the GS1 standards. The organizations’ goals are to provide greater efficiency and interoperability for supply chain and maintenance operations, strengthen inventory management, and simplify data exchanges between different systems and stakeholders. The initial collaboration addresses the requirements of the railway industry, with other sectors to follow.
A pilot project is in progress in France for national railway companies to implement a more cost-effective identification system for infrastructure and rollingstock. This initial collaboration is proving the feasibility and value of carrying GS1 identifiers from EPC/RFID tags over LoRaWAN networks. Additionally, an enriched data format is being specified, which can be applied to the railway industry to improve geolocation use cases by networks, as well as access to additional sensing data for predictive maintenance and asset management. End users will have access to easy digitization of existing systems, as well as reduced integration and operational costs resulting from larger adoption of GS1 standards with LoRaWAN.
“The deployment of LoRaWAN has greatly accelerated over the past 12 months and has positioned 2021 to be the year of massive scaling of applications across multiple industries,” said Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance. “One clear trend that has emerged is the need for multi-RAN strategies to address specific use cases. The combination of short-range RFID and long-range LoRaWAN networks represents a huge market opportunity, where cost-effective wireless communication can be achieved, amplifying the user benefits of both technologies. This liaison is another step in the LoRa Alliance’s strategic initiative to simplify the IoT by making LoRaWAN more accessible and interoperable with open standards."
François Deprey, vice-chair of GS1 in Europe and CEO of GS1 France, explains: “What makes a lot of sense in this agreement between GS1 in Europe and the LoRa Alliance is a common belief in the benefits of interoperability. For the last 50 years, GS1 has been working with a lot of different industries to make supply chains more efficient, and data more portable and sharable. Nowadays, to fully benefit from the fast-growing development of IoT, better collaboration across sectors and data standardization are essential. In France, the pilot program of SNCF where GS1 France and the LoRa Alliance collaborate is a perfect use case to demonstrate the benefits for maintenance and operations in this sector. It also proves the necessity to deploy a ‘technology-agnostic’ common language to maximize the advantages of digital transformation.”
In the initial pilot program, the focus is on inventory and condition monitoring of railway industry assets. The project objective is to demonstrate that combining RFID and LoRaWAN deliverables cost-effective visibility of railway assets, resulting in improved uptime, maintenance, and operations. The ambition is to launch other pilots and projects within this cooperation to cover additional sectors and expand to other countries.
About the LoRa Alliance
The LoRa Alliance® is an open, nonprofit association that has become one of the largest and fastest-growing alliances in the technology sector since its inception in 2015. Its members collaborate closely and share expertise to develop and promote the LoRaWAN® standard, the de facto global standard for secure, carrier-grade IoT LPWAN connectivity. LoRaWAN has the technical flexibility to address a broad range of IoT applications, both static and mobile, and a robust LoRaWAN Certification program to guarantee that devices perform as specified. Deployed by 150 major mobile network operators globally, LoRaWAN connectivity is available in more than 160 countries, with continual expansion.
To learn more about LoRaWAN, the LoRa Alliance, the benefits of membership, and to keep up with the alliance’s latest developments, please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook or visit our website.
LoRa Alliance® and LoRaWAN® are registered trademarks, used with permission.
About GS1 in Europe
GS1 is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the implementation of global standards to improve the efficiency, visibility and sustainability of products all around the world, and represents more than 2.5 million companies in the world. GS1 in Europe is the European collaboration platform of GS1 regrouping 49 countries in Europe and beyond, representing more than 500.000 companies in Europe.
GS1 in Europe role is to bring these companies around the table and foster collaboration in order to establish common rules and common standards.
If you are interested to know more about how we can support businesses through all our European projects and activities please visit our website www.gs1.eu or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
GS1 is a registered trademark of GS1 AISBL
MEDIA CONTACTS
Eric Lawson for LoRa Alliance
Diogo Almeida, GS1 in Europe Events and communication coordinator
