PLANT MANAGEMENT
The use of RTLS provides a big opportunity for process-based businesses to increase productivity, cut costs and improve staff safety. The convergence of business intelligence (BI) with mobile and big data has shifted data to the core of most organisations, yet even the best BI platforms may be lacking important ‘location’ information. The good news, explains Bedford, is that this gap can be bridged by the deployment of RTLS.
“Location intelligence (LI) from our LocaTOR system complements customers’ current metrics of who,
what and when with real-time knowledge of ‘where’. LocaTOR, as its name suggests, locates people and assets in real time when they are inside or close to buildings.”
HOW DOES THE SOLUTION WORK?
LocaTOR identifi es and locates the on-site position of non-fi xed objects, assets and people in real time. It’s a contactless system comprising receive/ transmit, mains- or Power over Ethernet- (PoE) powered beacons and battery-powered active tags. The beacons are deployed around a site attached to walls, gantries and other fi xed points suitable for detecting the presence of assets fi tted with fi xed active tags or people who wear tags in the same way as they wear an ID/access control card.
Bedford explains that, “LocaTOR tags
each emit a unique identifi er and, as any tag approaches and passes by the beacons, the network
LocaTOR uses RFID tags and beacons
becomes aware of its presence and therefore its real-time location. “Contactless means that the beacons and tags
correspond with each other by wireless technologies; tags merely have to be near a beacon (range adjustable per application) to be detected.” He adds: “Data generation and data handling – real-
time location information about the tag – is transmitted from the identifying beacon to the database(s) either locally or in the cloud.”
The competitive edge I
ts makers believe that the LocaTOR solution has both hardware and software
features that set it apart from competing solutions on the market. Bedford says: “It is fully contactless and therefore tag wearers do not have to do anything different to their current modus operandi. And it is wholly dedicated to real-time
tag or beacon level or accidentally switched off.” He adds that LocaTOR does not use GPS or already/previously installed Wi-Fi service access points as these systems become unreliable. “GPS doesn’t work well indoors, and Wi-Fi APs can be overloaded and location intelligence no longer fl ows in real time.”
Bedford also states that the system has been designed to be user-friendly. It
LocaTOR is contactless and wireless can be implemented out of the box and is completely scalable: the number of
location intelligence; it’s designed specifi cally for on-site RTLS and cannot be tampered with at the
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tags and beacons on each system can be increased to cover the largest site with multiple solutions. ■
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