Use case:
Material handling equipment (forklifts, pallet jacks, lift trucks) is a vital part of manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing tasks for many businesses, yet operations managers are typically not efficiently controlling the expense, maintenance, utilization, and safety of these resources. Knowing the real-time location of equipment, being able to track utilization data over time, and having visibility of interaction with other elements in the facility (personnel, parts or inventory) can lead to great improvements in efficiency, cost, and safety. Large warehouse facilities compound the challenges, requiring numerous forklifts, on-floor personnel, and complex floor plan and storage layouts.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Forklift Tracking:

• Locate forklift equipment and warehouse stock in real-time, minimizing unproductive hours and reduce the need for overstocking.
• Minimize idle capacity in the forklift truck fleet and improve productivity by ensuring proper equipment utilization.
• Improve operational throughput by identifying areas of congestion, optimizing routes, and modifying floor space layouts.
• Integrate forklift data with other business systems for deeper insights and enhanced performance.
• Enable timely movement and track conditions of perishable goods and better manage expedited deliveries.
• Remove inefficiencies in the management and execution of material handling orders, improve customer satisfaction with more timely order fulfillment.
• Increase workplace safety through real-time visibility and alarms as well as analysis of worker and equipment traffic patterns.
• Cut operational expenses for fuel costs, driver time, unscheduled maintenance, and the number of forklifts in the fleet.

Use case:
Operational managers are facing challenging requirements for tracking personnel within a facility, both for managing health and safety and for improving efficiency. They are increasingly being asked to incorporate “people tracking” to meet regulatory requirements and enable business improvement strategies. Monitoring the location of personnel in real-time enables real-time management (safety alerts, geo-fencing access) as well as building datasets for analyzing and optimizing management of human-resource and production assets. Recently, the added requirement of privacy for health-related data has increased the challenge.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based People Tracking:

• Real-time tracking of overall density and individual distancing of people within the operational environment, a new requirement in the case of pandemic mitigation.
• Automatic workforce time-billing or tracking for operations analysis and identifying bottlenecks and potential areas of improvement.
• Integration of personnel movements within operations management, adding workforce movement and workplace safety into overall enterprise planning and management tools and systems.
• Facilitating and automating regulatory safety compliance, with rule-based alerts and secure audit trail.
• Real-time location-based zonal or micro-geofencing to control equipment movement, access to specific facilities areas, and monitor safety exclusions.
• Locating visitors and vendors as they enter and leave a facility to improve premises safety and security.

Use case:
Warehouses require higher efficiency and better utilization of their resources including maintenance and production equipment, forklifts and material handling, personnel, shelf and rack systems, and facilities floor space. Management systems must coordinate the movement of parts and materials, and optimize the deployment of assets and personnel. This goes beyond cost savings as higher throughput and efficiencies enable faster growth, improve the ability to manage market demand surges, and preclude requirements for facility and staffing expansion. Warehouse material handling and forklift equipment location is often unknown or, worse, the equipment is involved in accidents.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Warehouse and Inventory Management:

• Ensuring accuracy of production and inventory management, tracking as inbound parts, in-process, and finished inventory moves through production, warehousing, and shipping.
• Improving efficiencies by reducing inventory and asset item location times and removing sources of human error.
• Expanding safety margins of moving equipment by tracking equipment and personnel location in real time.
• Providing executive-level analytics and review of operations in dashboard feeds for continuous workflow and operations improvement.
• Checking for presence, proximity, movement and sensor analytics to automate and enhance the warehouse operations and real-time inventory accuracy.

Use case:
Tracking vehicles and equipment (trucks/trailers, forklifts) that are randomly parked or required to move frequently within large indoor/outdoor areas is an ongoing challenge for yard operations. Additionally, movable storage containers, shipping racks, and yard personnel must also be located. This leads to inability to locate assets, inefficient utilization, unnecessary safety risks, and inefficiencies of inevitable bottlenecks at gates and key loading zones.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Yard Management:

• Ability to efficiently track hundreds, or even thousands, of assets that may be moving rapidly or may remain stationary for extended periods.
• Seamless tracking over large areas, among multiple obstructions, between indoor and outdoor locations.
• Ability to track a variety of mobile assets, with easily installed self-powered tracker tags which don’t rely on vehicle power.
• Eliminate time & personnel needed to locate mobile assets, manage and coordinate movements in the yard, queue at gates.
• Software integration with existing ERP and telematics, and the ability to create business rules and alerts.

Use case:
Today’s businesses are looking for ways to drive efficiencies throughout their operations, supply chain, production, and distribution processes. Real time asset visibility and workflow tracking can eliminate logistics inefficiencies and bottlenecks to productivity and profitability, and provide better asset utilization. To succeed, managers need visibility of the status of assets such as material handling equipment, parts racks, assembly fixtures, tools, and specialized support & test equipment, as well as logistics assets such as trailers, containers, and rail carriers. In addition, tracking workflow of parts, sub-assemblies, and finished products from production to QA to distribution requires a hardware and software system that provides constant visibility and integrates with MES and ERP systems.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Asset & Workflow Tracking:

• Provide real-time asset and workflow location and status to enable centralized workflow decision making and provide an integrated approach to process improvement.
• Integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise infrastructure, software systems, and processes.
• Ensure that assets and in-process workflow are ready and available, avoiding cost for redundant assets, equipment, inventory, and transport.
• Support implementation of regulatory and workplace safety and regulatory compliance through accurate location and automated proximity and movement tracking.
• Cut down on man hours and time-wasted for manual, error prone “track-and-trace” processes for asset management.

Use case:
MRO providers remain competitive by delivering fast, reliable, and customized service for airline, transportation, and shipping customers. Providers are increasingly challenged to operate with greater efficiency and flexibility, to more effectively allocate resources and inventory, and to reduce overall operational costs. MRO services are highly dependent on specialized, expensive moveable assets, highly trained technical staff, and long lead-time replacement parts. In addition, unpredictability of customer demand and increasingly complex work requirements complicate planning and operations. MRO facilities can cover large geographic areas and incorporate multiple buildings, requiring tracking technology to work over large distances and in interference-prone RF environments. MRO providers are looking to RTLS as part of their strategic roadmap for technology implementation and digital transformation.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based MRO:

• Reduce turnaround times and improve on-time delivery while maintaining quality and safety standards.
• Provide visibility over current and forecasted plant capacity to identify bottlenecks, manage constraints, and minimize inventory.
• Reduce overtime and operating costs, managing optimal finite capacity schedules to coordinate and manage the numerous people, tools, and materials involved in MRO operations.
• Provide real-time visibility of tools and instruments used in MRO tasks, as time spent searching for these assets causes delays and results in unnecessary downtime and misuse of the workforce.
• Eliminate service delays and unforeseen costs, providing customers with more accurate quotes.
• Automate replacement part management with auditable shipping/receiving records, real-time tracking, and stock pull notifications.

Use case:
Today’s global manufacturers face more competitive threats, tighter production standards, more regulations, and more cost pressures than ever before. Manufacturing businesses produce a large variety of products, but the challenges from one manufacturing firm to another remain similar. Improving productivity and profitability throughout the value chain requires firms to optimize parts inventory, streamline assembly, test, and packaging, and improve efficiency of warehousing, transportation, and delivery. Accurate and reliable real-time location tracking of assets, inventory, and personnel enables operational visibility and management planning. Manufacturers are looking to RTLS to improve asset utilization and availability, increase workplace safety, reduce maintenance costs, boost return on assets, and better manage overall operational performance.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Advanced Manufacturing:

• Real-time location data to enable full visibility into warehouse operations, including receiving, stock and tool pull, inventory replenishment, QA, packing, and shipping.
• Decision makers need to know how deployment of discrete parts, tools, equipment, and employees impacts key business objectives and the bottom line.
• Manufacturers must monitor hundreds or thousands of assets (parts, tools, personnel) throughout large indoor and outdoor production environments.
• High-level of automation, including execution of business rules and processes, management and tracking of workflow, inventory, regulatory and work-force safety.
• Seamless hardware and software integration with multiple existing planning and production systems.
• Optimized utilization of assets, resources and facilities, with the goal of eliminating waste and redundancy.

Use case:
Healthcare companies are continuously looking for ways to increase efficiency, productivity, and quality of care. Hospital systems are enormous organizations with an overwhelming number of assets and staff to schedule and deploy. Deficiencies in asset tracking lead to inefficient deployment, scheduling delays, and reduction in quality of care. Location tracking is critical to improving asset utilization, staff effectiveness, operational efficiency, and risk mitigation. But manual tracking and monitoring methods are error-prone and time consuming for staff who often face time-critical situations. Healthcare operation improvements rely on an automated system to precisely track the location and status of mobile equipment, to know where medical and service staff are located, and confirm patient location.

Solution requirements for RTLS-based Healthcare Operations:

• Ensure rapid response to clinical equipment needs, closely track equipment usage patterns, and identify idle assets.
• Track asset movement between departments to maximize equipment utilization and decrease the occurrence of lost or stolen devices.
• Reduce unnecessary equipment purchases and rentals by better managing inventory utilization and procurement.
• Enable cost savings by allowing healthcare organizations to offer the appropriate level of service with an optimized asset inventory.
• Improve compliance to hand sanitizing procedures and provide traceability of staff and equipment in mitigating hospital-acquired infections.