From scanning to sensing: a new era of supply chain visibility

55 billion RFID tags were produced in 2025. On April 14, 2026, UPS announced the rollout of RFID sensing across its entire U.S. small package network. Today, RFID sensing technology runs in every UPS package delivery vehicle in the U.S., across the company’s delivery facilities, and on every package shipped through more than 5,500 The UPS Store locations. UPS calls it “the most significant visibility advancement in the past decade at UPS and in our industry.” 

For an industry that has spent thirty years scanning, this is a real turning point. UPS frames it as the move from scanning to sensing. Packages are now sensed automatically as they move through the network, with no manual scan required. The early results are striking: 

• Misloads down nearly 70% 

• 20 million manual scans eliminated per day 

• Real-time pickup confirmation, the first carrier to offer this across a U.S. network 

• Faster response when weather or unexpected events disrupt the network 

More than $100 million has gone into the rollout, and UPS is the first major logistics provider to do this across an integrated network. That is what a market crossing the threshold from “promising” to “necessary infrastructure” looks like. And it is good news for everyone who cares about asset visibility, including us at Sensolus. 

Customers no longer need to be convinced that real-time supply chain visibility is worth investing in. UPS has just demonstrated the business case at scale. 

A more mature visibility market lifts every player in it: 

• Buyers come to the conversation already convinced 

• Budgets for visibility projects are easier to justify 

• The question shifts from “why visibility?” to “how complete is your visibility?” 

That is exactly the conversation Sensolus is built for. 

RFID is unbeatable at the sensing point. Pass an item through a dock door, a sortation gate or a delivery vehicle’s loading bay, and it is identified in milliseconds, for fractions of a cent. The UPS rollout is the gold standard: dense reader infrastructure, billions of tags, every choke point instrumented. 

What RFID is not built for is continuous, outdoor, autonomous location of high-value mobile assets. Once a roll cage leaves the facility, a returnable container reaches a customer site, or a trailer parks somewhere in a five-acre yard, the asset has to return to a reader to be seen again. 

That is exactly where Sensolus IoT asset tracking shines: 

• Long-life, low-power trackers with multi-year battery life 

• Cellular and LPWAN connectivity 

• No fixed infrastructure required 

• Live location, status and movement data on every asset, anywhere 

Together with RFID, the supply chain finally has a continuous picture: identification at the choke point, location everywhere in between. 

Returnable transport items and packaging

• RFID identifies the individual unit at the warehouse
• Sensolus tracks the pool itself: at the customer, in transit, or idle at a forgotten site
• Outcome: lower loss rates and smaller, healthier pool sizes

Yard, trailer and fleet management

• RFID handles gate-in and gate-out events
• Sensolus follows the trailer across the network, flags unauthorized moves, and confirms arrival even when no reader is in range
• Outcome: full network visibility, not just gate visibility

Last-100-meter visibility

• RFID confirms a parcel was loaded; UPS pickup sensing already confirms the package is in its possession
• Sensolus confirms the cage, dolly or container that carried it actually came back, and where it ended up if it did not
• Outcome: returnable asset losses turn into recoverable data

Healthcare and high-value mobile equipment

• RFID delivers unit-level identification inside the hospital
• Sensolus follows the asset between buildings, sites and external partners
• Outcome: equipment uptime and utilisation go up, search time goes down

Sensolus does not compete with RFID providers. We complement them. The Sensolus platform integrates cleanly with the systems your operations already run on: 

• Warehouse management systems (WMS) 

• Transport management systems (TMS) 

• ERP platforms 

• Custom supply chain applications 

The events Sensolus generates, such as “entered geozone”, “on the move”, “idle for 14 days” or “back at customer X”, drop into the same operational picture as RFID scans. One view, one source of truth, two layers of data working together. 

The UPS rollout is more than a logistics story. It signals that the supply chain has officially moved from scanning to sensing, and that real-time visibility is now the standard customers expect end to end. RFID handles the choke points beautifully. Sensolus picks up wherever your assets go next, and brings the data back into the same operational picture. 

Does Sensolus replace RFID? No. Sensolus complements RFID. RFID identifies items at fixed reader locations; Sensolus tracks the location, status and movement of mobile assets wherever they go. 

Can Sensolus integrate with my existing RFID system? Yes. Sensolus integrates with WMS, TMS, ERP and custom supply chain platforms through APIs, so RFID and IoT tracking data appear in the same operational view. 

Which types of assets are best suited for Sensolus tracking? High-value mobile assets that move beyond fixed reader infrastructure: returnable transport items, trailers, roll cages, dollies, containers, and mobile equipment in healthcare or industry. 

How long do Sensolus trackers last? Sensolus trackers are designed for multi-year battery life on a single charge, with cellular and LPWAN connectivity options to suit different use cases.