ELA Innovation Industrial Tracking

Industrial Tool Tracking

Managing equipment, and specifically tracking the location of tools, is a critical aspect of ensuring the smooth operation of a factory. Operations managers are concerned with keeping an inventory of all equipment for safety, maintenance, and performance optimization purposes. To meet this need, many businesses are investing in asset tracking solutions. Digitalizing projects that include geolocation make up about 70% of these investments, with the goal of improving productivity and factory performance. Advanced geolocation systems will boost value creation by improving flow management, enhancing tool safety, and automating previously manual tasks.

 

How Does Geolocation of Industrial Tools Work?

Different technologies are available to locate tools, depending on various factors. The type of infrastructure desired, number and size of tools to be tracked, environment of the solution's installation, infrastructure cost, and level of precision required are all considerations when choosing a technology.

For geolocating industrial tools, ELA Innovation provides localization beacons based on Quuppa AOA technology, which is well-suited to industrial needs, particularly in the aerospace sector. This indoor geolocation technique relies on a network infrastructure of mobile beacons and 360° fixed antennas. Antennas are fixed in height to cover the maximum ground surface, and beacons are attached to tools to be located. In less than 100ms, the AOA (Angle Of Arrival) protocol can detect the angle between the antenna and the beacon in a 3D repository, tracking the beacon's position with precision less than 1m. This technology can locate all kinds of tools in real-time, even the smallest ones, even if they're on shelves.

Logistics and Industrial Vehicle Tracking

Improve industrial tool geolocation with ELA Innovation location beacons. Proper management of equipment, especially geolocating tools, is critical for factories. To monitor and inventory all equipment, companies need asset tracking solutions, which include geolocation in 70% of their digitalization projects. Connected geolocation solutions increase productivity, performance, flow management, tool safety, and automate manual tasks. Geolocating logistics vehicles requires different technologies based on several criteria, such as desired infrastructure type, number and size of equipment, installation environment, infrastructure cost, and level of precision. ELA Innovation offers two location beacons: Wirepas Mesh and RFID Active DOT.

Wirepas Mesh is a mesh network of fixed and mobile beacons. Mobile beacons are equipped on geolocation tools, while fixed beacons are placed regularly in buildings to create a network. The location information is determined by the intensity of the signal and is sent via the mesh to the gateway. The Wirepas Positioning Engine transforms the data into GPS coordinates viewable on a business platform, and location accuracy can be set between 5 to 10 meters.

BLE is designed to offer many of the same features as Bluetooth but focusing on low power. As a result, it is not as fast as Bluetooth and is not suitable for transferring large files. But it is ideal for transferring small amounts of data with minimal power consumption.