Real Time Location System
Real-time tracking of forklifts or other vehicles, such as AVGs, clamps and forklifts, helps your logistics and production managers achieve greater efficiency, profitability and safety by making better use of your fleet, cutting down on wasted man hours and, more importantly, preventing accidents.
What is RTLS?
A real-time location system (RTLS) grants the knowledge of the exact position of forklifts, vehicles and operators at any given time. Based on previously collected data, an RTLS allows to analyze traffic and enables to identify and eradicate workflow bottlenecks, saving time and money.
Generally, in our projects, the average precision over time is about 50 cm but can reach as little as 20cm.
- Up to 90% of the performance is achieved by good deployment.
- See and implement heatmaps, zones statistics, spaghetti diagrams, activity monitoring and enter/exit zones.
Mapping & Reporting
Sensmap is a real-time visualization tool that gives you a real-time overview of all the processes that are taking place at your facility. It allows you to add buildings and their plans and auto-deploy the anchors – giving you your first valuable insights in a few minutes.
Different zones, paths, wall and exits can be added to finalize the project. An unlimited number of virtual zones can be set up in deep detail thanks to the solution’s 30 cm accuracy. The geofencing, alert and notification features easily support any of your current and future use cases based on precise and reliable indoor tracking.
With the reporing tools within the system you can setup zones in which you can analyse how much time your people or equipment are spending in particular area's or zones within your facility. Using heatmaps helps you to deliver a high level of process visibility to your planning by revealing the distribution and density of your indoor traffic together with the weak spots causing delays. Using a spaghetti diagram, both in real-time mode and as a historical replay, enables you to explore the continuous flow of your fleet for further process optimization by identifying inefficiencies in area/work layout, transportation wastage and reducing non-value-added activities.
How does RTLS work?
Each forklift, or subject that needs to be tracked is equipped with a tag that transmits a signal to anchors attached to the ceilings. The anchors then send the signal to the RTLS server and calculate the vehicle’s position in real-time and with 30 cm accuracy. The tag can be powered from the vehicle’s battery or by its own battery.Â
What are some of the benefits of RTLS?
Forklift Navigation and Prevention of Incorrect Unloads
Every forklift is equipped with a screen, so operators have a real-time view of their allocated tasks. Through this, operators immediately know where to pick up the next load and the exact location of where to unload it. In addition, the navigation guides the operator via the fastest/shortest route based on the traffic and blockers on the route.
At the moment the operator is ready to drop off the load, they are immediately alerted if they are at an incorrect position, preventing an incorrect unload. Unlike other real-time location systems, only UWB-powered RTLS ensures 30 cm accuracy, even in harsh industrial environments, when you need to know the exact position of each pallet.
Increasing Safety Using the Forklift Anti-collision System
In the US alone, every year, forklift accidents account for 85 deaths and 34,900 serious injuries. At the same time, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that about 70% of forklift accidents could be prevented.
Using employee location tracking to know where people are moving within the facility as well knowing in real-time and with 30 cm accuracy where each forklift is means that the forklift can be automatically slowed down when approaching a cross road or being close to an employee or another forklift. This represent an industry-proven forklift anti-collision system to prevent forklift-to-forklift and forklift-to-employee collisions.
Smart Forklift Alerts for Increasing Safety and Access Control
Sewio’s unrivaled scalability to deliver industry-proven indoor tracking projects, whatever the size, allows you to create any number of virtual zones, which can then be easily updated at any time. This gives the intralogistics managers full control over developing virtual zones in which the driver gets alerted or warned to avoid of driving to banned areas.
The forklift driver can also be alerted on his screen if the visitor, e.g. truck driver suddenly steps in his zone of operation to prevent the injury. The alerts can be set not only based on the position of the forklift, but on excessive driving speed. This smart forklift concept increases the observance of access rules, forklift damage prevention and overall workplace safety.
