The manufacturing sector
The manufacturing sector produces tangible goods, transforming raw materials into finished products. It encompasses numerous industries, such as metals, electronics, chemicals, food, petroleum, plastics, textiles, and many others.
This sector is crucial to the global economy, but international competition increasingly requires greater efficiency, flexibility, and innovation. Companies that adopt new digital technologies enjoy a significant competitive advantage. To stay ahead of the market, it is necessary to initiate a digitalization process, which allows for:
- improving production management
- increasing efficiency, quality, and flexibility
- reducing costs
Industry 4.0
In recent years, we’ve often heard about Industry 4.0, a term coined in 2011 at the Hannover Messe in Germany.
It’s an industrial model based on a technological mix of automation, digitalization, connectivity, and programming, which profoundly changes technological and cultural paradigms.
The main consequences of Industry 4.0 are:
- faster production
- higher product quality
- reduction of error margins
- new business models
Asset Tracking: what it is and how it works
Asset Tracking is a key component of Industry 4.0. It allows a company’s assets to be located and monitored in real time, thanks to the integration of hardware (Bluetooth® LE beacons, antennas) and software (unique identification and real-time data acquisition).
Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) are the systems that allow asset tracking to be structured. With them, it is possible to:
- track vehicles, forklifts, raw materials, semi-finished products, and pallets
- also monitor workers in certain contexts (via bracelets or badges)
- create a Digital Twin, a virtual representation of assets, useful for simulating and optimizing production processes
Key advantages of RTLS-based Digital Twin:
- reduced travel times
- optimized routes
- increased worker safety
- greater visibility of internal processes
- increased efficiency and punctuality
- in practice, it allows for a digital factory with complete, real-time control over all production
The importance of asset tracking in manufacturing
The manufacturing sector is characterized by complex production cycles and thousands of materials and semi-finished products. In this context, Asset Tracking offers concrete benefits:
- it reduces the risk of losing or forgetting assets
- it prevents production delays
- it reduces hours wasted by operators in manual searches
- it improves planning and scheduling
Furthermore, rising energy costs, component shortages, and the growth of e-commerce make accurate asset tracking essential.
Concrete benefits of Asset Tracking systems:
- tracking assets of any size
- monitoring of production stages
- inventory automation
- pick-to-light functions
- monitoring of machine downtime
These benefits lead to:
- reduced search times
- zero errors and material losses
- less inventory times
- resource optimization
The asset tracking market is growing rapidly: according to Expert Market Research, it will grow from $16.9 billion in 2021 to $36.51 billion by 2027, at an average annual growth rate of 13.7%.
RTLS for BlueUp Asset Tracking
BlueUp RTLS Asset Tracking solutions are all based on Bluetooth® LE standards or compatible wireless protocols.
BlueUp offers three different RTLS platforms that differ in performance, cost, and installation complexity.
LocateBLE (whose evolution is bleenc) allows the localization of assets and people in real time through algorithms based on RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and trilateration. The rewarding feature of LocateBLE is its independence from hardware: the platform, in fact, is designed to be compatible with multiple types of Bluetooth® Low Energy antennas on the market: Bluetooth® LE beacon gateway, WiFi access point with Bluetooth® LE interface, Zigbee or mesh modules with support Bluetooth® LE extension. This flexibility makes LocateBLE suitable for a wide range of Real-Time Asset Tracking applications in the logistics sector.
Finally, in case location accuracy is the key requirement, AccuRTLS is the ideal solution. AccuRTLS provides state-of-the-art performance, with real-time tracking and accuracy down to a few tens of centimeters in a real operating environment, thanks to RTLS Bluetooth® LE Angle of Arrival technology, developed by Quuppa, of which BlueUp has been a partner since 2017.
For this technology, BlueUp develops and produces Quuppa Approved tags, certified directly by Quuppa to be fully compatible on a functional, performance and mechanical level with Quuppa technology.
Do you want to find out if BlueUp solutions can help you in your reality? Contact us to find out more!