The Future of Manufacturing: Real-Time Asset Tracking
Manufacturing companies have an endless list of assets to manage efficiently to develop their products. They include anything from tools used by workers to heavy equipment and fleets of vehicles such as forklifts and automated guided vehicles (AGVs).
Effective control over all of these assets is essential to having a high inventory turnover, reducing maintenance costs and operational expenses, and increasing asset ROI. While there are many approaches to asset management practiced by companies, one has been steadily increasing in usage: real-time asset tracking.
In fact, the market for real-time tracking systems is projected to go from $16 billion in 2019 to $40 billion by 2024.
The Complexity of Asset Management
Many people visiting manufacturing facilities during tours don’t realize that operating assets are much more than the environment they encounter. There’s so much more involved in processes, and the complexity of the product often drives highly sophisticated assembly lines where a lot of assets are involved.
Sid Sitkin, an IoT and Asset Lifecycle Information Management expert, outlines the following groups of operational assets:
- Physical. There’s a tremendous range of these assets; they are the central elements required for the manufacturing process to work
- Human. These are employees responsible for directing workflow, assembling products and parts, inspecting and repairing the equipment, driving moving equipment like forklifts, etc.
- VIrtual. This is the information used to create, utilize, and care of a company’s physical assets as well as the IT infrastructure.
By managing the utilization and performance of assets involved in manufacturing, the management of the plant can prevent money and time losses.
To ensure effective asset management, many companies use traditional methods for collecting process-related information. In many cases, these methods can reduce the performance of employees as well as managers because they require substantial time investments.
For example, an employee (which is also a critical asset) working on an assembly line can be required to complete paper timesheets or spend some time inputting information on a computer or a workstation. The use of paperwork or manual labor can be costly, as it reduces the amount of time the workforce spends on tasks that add more value.
As a result, the problem of workforce underutilization can occur.
Similarly, the manager of a plant doesn’t have a single view of work-in-progress (WIP) as well as immediate asset allocation capability. This prevents them from being able to address problems as insufficient inventory and asset search much more quickly and effectively.
Why Real-Time Asset Tracking?
A real-time location system (RTLS) is the infrastructure consisting of portable locating equipment and software that allows to have a visual overview of the tracking environment.
By attaching mobile tracking devices to manufacturing assets or employees, the manager can monitor their movement across the facility and spot potential issues quickly.
The tracking devices come in different shapes to make attaching to various assets possible. For example, here’s a selection of Location Tags used by our own RTLS Indoorway. The biggest white-colored elements are Data Hubs, the devices collecting tracking data in real time and sending it for processing.
The asset tracking software is the software that displays the movement of assets and records the data for historical analysis.
For example, Indoorway RTLS Analytical Dashboard is a user-friendly, interactive software that a plant manager can use to observe real-time and historical movement of assets and find their locations in a facility.
By using such a system in a manufacturing facility, the manufacturer can improve its processes in many ways. Here are some of them:
- Quickly identify asset location. The RTLS keeps the manager aware of the precise location of the most valuable assets involved in manufacturing processes as well as people
- Eliminate redundant assets. The tracking can allow to find unused or underused assets, and eliminate them to reduce spending
- Improve the organization of the shop floor. By tracking moving assets of WIP over time, you can spot the improvement opportunities in the organization of the physical space, whether it’s a storage unit or manufacturing floor
- Monitor performance of employees as well as unproductive activities. The system collects data on individual employees and teams to show how much time they spend in a certain process
- Identify process inefficiencies and Lean wastes. For example, RTLS users can detect preventable equipment downtime due to insufficient inventory and help with reducing transportation, motion, overproduction, and waiting wastes.
The usage of RTLS makes sense because it can help to improve work standardization and coordination, process productivity, and resource management and allocation. The data collected by RTLS is often analyzed by manufacturing experts to help with detecting specific inefficiencies such as Lean wastes.
The asset data collected by Indoorway RTLS, for example, is analyzed by Lean Manufacturing experts to generate analytical reports with insights into processes for managers.
Is Real-Time Tracking Expensive?
There’s a common misconception that the cost of purchasing and installing RTLS at a manufacturing facility is very high, so many companies can’t afford it.
The reality is pretty much different.
- Real-time tracking typically delivers a full return on investment in less than 12 months due to increases in productivity and accountability
- The time to install RTLS and start collecting data is really short (for example, the installation of Indoorway RTLS covering a 1,500 square meter area takes only 8 hours)
- ROI is further improved by increases in accountability and productivity.
Of course, choosing the right RTLS is important, so check out the steps to take to choose RTLS for manufacturing.
Feel free to take a look at indoor positioning SWOT analysis for more information, too.
The Bottom Line
The quick increase in the global RTLS market suggests that more and more companies are trying and investing in the technology. At this point, it’s becoming clear that real-time tracking will be a common tool in the arsenal of manufacturing businesses in the next few years.
If you’d like how your manufacturing business can benefit by tracking assets, feel free to drop us a line at our website indoorway.com.
