Leveraging Location Data to Uncover the Hidden Factory

Written By: Darcie Cousins, Technical Sales Consultant, UK

By consuming location data in real-time and transforming it into visible, actionable information, Ubisense solutions reveal the ‘hidden factory’ and empower managers and executives to improve production processes, improve product quality, and automate key business processes to make their operations leaner and more efficient. 

What does that actually mean? Well, here is one analogy that might help, and it’s all about location.

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to get from Point A to Point B, you probably pulled out a paper map of the region you were traveling in. You may have had to take some time to locate your start and end points if you weren’t already familiar with where things were. Then you would assess your various route options and plan the best possible route according to your priorities – fastest, shortest, most scenic, etc.

It was time consuming and somewhat risky. Your map probably didn't show road construction and if it was out of date your planned route may not have been the most efficient – newer, larger roads might have been built that would have been a better option had you known about them. If it was a long journey, the map may have had some service stations marked but for the most part finding places to stop or eat along the way was all part of the "mystery" and "adventure" of the fabled road trip.

Once you set off, you were never sure what was just around the corner. How many times did you sit for hours in bumper to bumper traffic because of an accident or road construction? How many greasy diners did you eat at, not knowing your favorite healthy restaurant franchise was just one mile away? Did you ever really know what ETA to give your anxious relatives waiting for you? Have you ever spent a nervous hour driving through the desert hoping to find a service station with the fuel gauge dropping lower and lower? I have.

Kids today have no idea what this was like – it is the 21^st century equivalent of the "walked ten miles to school with no shoes" stories our grandparents told us. This is because today we have smart phones, and these phones are running location aware applications.

Have you ever thought about how many of the apps we use daily are using location data to make our lives better and easier? My phone lists dozens, including apps for fitness, bird watching, shopping, weather, public transportation, parking, and travel. Now when I want to take a road trip I load a crowd sourced navigation app. It offers me multiple route options to choose from and displays trip distance, time, and current traffic conditions along the way. It lets me send my ETA to a friend, and even provides a link for them to monitor my trip progress in real time. Other users enter information about traffic conditions, accidents, or hazards in the road in real time, and the app will offer me a new route to help avoid them. 

All of this functionality makes travel much more efficient and pleasant than it used to be. It eliminates a lot of wasted time, effort, and energy by giving me all the information I need to make the right decisions according to my goals and preferences – and all in real time.

Ubisense Real Time Location Intelligence (RTLI) solutions are designed to bring the time and money saving features of these applications we all take for granted in our personal lives and apply them to business environments. Using the Smart Factory product set, manufacturers are able to answer important questions about the current state of production using information provided in real time. 

The system consumes location data that can come from various sources – Ubisense sensors and tags, handheld barcode readers, passive RFID tags and readers, PLCs, and so on – and transforms it into business intelligence. Businesses who have invested in this technology are now able to understand the secrets that were previously hidden in the factory:

• Where is Product123 right now?  
• How far through the production process is Product123? (Is it running on time?)
• Are there any known quality issues on Product123? (Is it in rework?)
• When is Product123 likely to be finished? (Is it at risk of exceeding the target production time?)
• What tools have been used to assemble Product123? (Does this match the bill of materials for that product?)
• What is the average time that products are spending in process step 4? (Is this in line with our performance goals?)
• Does process step 4 take more time for some types of products than others? (Let’s look into why.)

Smart Factory includes a powerful rules and events engine that is able to monitor for specific situations and proactively alert production leaders to events they are interested in:

• The Ageing WIP KPI is in danger of being exceeded for product123. (It needs to be prioritized.)
• Workspace 4 can only accommodate three vehicles, but four have been parked there. (This carries an increased risk of paint damage.)
• A vehicle with an unresolved electrical fault just entered the Pass to Sales area. (It must be repaired it before it leaves the site.)
• A part that is vulnerable to corrosion has been in a workspace longer than it should be. (It must be protected to prevent scrap.)
• Part123 just deviated from its defined production workflow. (It needs to get back on track.)

Smart Factory can add value to production processes on its own, or act as an ‘enabling’ technology augmenting existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), or Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) systems. It provides the location intelligence that takes manufacturers out of the age of paper maps and brings them into the age of smart applications. Just as technology as made travel safer and more efficient, Ubisense RTLI solutions make navigating your business more efficient and cost-effective. 

Happy 25th Anniversary Smallworld!

Did you know?! 

Ubisense was founded by Smallworld founders and executives and our team of Smallworld consultants is the largest and most experienced in the world! 

December 5th 1988 Founders.
Can you find Ubisense CEO Richard Green?

Smallworld US launch, 1993
Can you spot Ubisense VP's, Jay Cadman and Peter Batty?

New Faces: Our Geoplan colleagues in Japan

Geoplan colleagues

Managing Director, Mr Nishizawa with Richard Green and the celebration cake

Streamlining Manufacturing

The small plastic tags developed by a University spin-out are helping make modern assembly lines up to ten per cent more efficient, by tracking hundreds of components in three dimensions and in real time.

Getting the maximum visibility over what’s happening in a plant allows for maximum improvements in quality and process speed.

Andy Ward

Tracking technology developed by Cambridge company Ubisense can greatly improve the accuracy and reliability of manufacturing lines, while reducing assembly times by up to ten per cent, by determining the exact coordinates of an item within a given space.

Ubisense, which spun-out from the University’s Computer Laboratory in 2002 and went public in 2011, has developed a highly-sensitive real-time tracking system, which decreases losses and increases efficiency in the manufacturing sector. The company’s products are used by more than 500 companies in 50 countries worldwide, including major companies such as BMW and Airbus.

The assembly line which Henry Ford envisioned, where “any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black,” is a world away from modern lines. Today, purchasing a car involves a head-spinning number of options, from paint colour to engine size to satnav. While this is a plus for the consumer, it has made assembly lines vastly more complicated, where each car on the line is different than the one ahead of it, meaning that tool settings must be manually changed for each car. Ubisense’s technology can improve accuracy while reducing assembly time by as much as ten per cent, automatically adjusting tool settings so that the correct settings are always used on the correct car.

The technology was developed by Andy Ward while he was a PhD student at the Computer Laboratory. Dr Ward, who is now Ubisense’s Chief Technology Officer, originally devised a system to track individuals as they moved around the Lab.

“This was in the mid-1990s, before most people had mobile phones,” he says. “At the time, it was considered totally revolutionary, because you could find out where your colleagues were without having to play phone tag. But we soon figured out that not only could you reroute phone calls, you could do lots of other interesting things too: computer systems in the building could alter the way that they worked based on who was near them and what was going on around them.”

After leaving the University, Ward co-founded Ubisense and set out to develop a more accurate version of his tracking system, which could not only determine which room an individual or piece of equipment was in, but also exactly where they were located in that room, what equipment was nearby and what that equipment was doing.

Ubisense’s system can be likened to a super-charged radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. RFID tags, such as those found in Oyster cards, send out a signal when it reaches a particular point, such as a card reader, but Ubisense’s system allows for highly precise, continuous tracking. The radio-based system consists of transmitters embedded in small tags, roughly two centimetres square, and base stations installed around a building.

As a tagged item moves through a space, the base stations will identify its precise coordinates in real time. Where RFID is useful in applications such as inventory control, the Ubisense system is ideal for manufacturing lines, where many different component parts need to come together at a certain point in time.

For example, the company has recently established a relationship with Airbus. Although Airbus builds its aeroplanes in Toulouse, the major component assemblies (MCAs) of the planes are constructed at facilities all over Europe. As Airbus does not have storage in Toulouse for huge stockpiles of aeroplane parts, all of the MCAs must arrive in Toulouse together. Airbus tags the MCAs with Ubisense technology, so that Toulouse can track their progress in factories across Europe to ensure that they all arrive in Toulouse at the same time, where they are bolted together and the finished aeroplane is flown off.

In addition to Airbus, the Ubisense technology is used by BMW in several of its car factories, saving time by ensuring that the settings on the various tools used on the line are automatically adjusted as an individual worker moves from car to car along the line. Industry estimates that the Ubisense technology can cut assembly time for each car by as much as ten per cent.

“The goal of the technology is to get the most accurate view of what’s happening, because then the computer can make the most sensible decision about what to do next,” says Dr Ward. “We’re trying to build systems which reduce the amount of human interaction which is required. By taking people out of the loop, you can make a system more error-proof. Getting the maximum visibility over what’s happening in a plant allows for maximum improvements in quality and process speed.”

In just over a decade, the company has grown from four staff to nearly 200, and in addition to its head office and research facilities in Cambridge, it has offices in Paris, Dusseldorf, Denver, Singapore and Seoul.

The company maintains links with the Computer Laboratory, where it originated, collaborating on various research projects. Its technology is manufactured in the UK, at a facility in Bedford.

Ward says it was the characteristics of the Cambridge Cluster which enabled the company to get off the ground in the first place. “Everything we needed to build a successful company was right here, because Cambridge is such an interesting mix of industrial know-how, funding opportunities and academic expertise.”

For more information, contact sarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk. 

- See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/streamlining-manufacturing#sthash.ZQuA7nH5.dpuf

Our RTLS Global Teams

Part of the UK RTLS Team: Dominik Hughes, Andy Ward, Barry Murdoch , Jon Heathcote

Part of our German RTLS Team: Terry Phebey,  Bruno Becker, Andy Schuerzinger, Roland Mink, Meike Porrmann, Hubert Peyre

Part of our Asia RTLS Team: HB Choi, Janice Kok

Part of our US RTLS Sales Team: Ken Crilley, Corey Holland, and Jay Cadman

Part of our France RTLS Sales Team: Joseph-Etienne Bernard,  Arnaud Martin,  Hubert Peyre

Black Hills Corporation selects Ubisense for Network Conflation Solution

Cambridge, UK - Ubisense Group plc (“Ubisense” or the “Company”) (AIM:UBI), a market leader in location based smart technology, announces it has been selected by Black Hills Corporation for a network asset realignment project.

Black Hills Corporation, a leading North American Energy Company has selected Ubisense and strategic partner, we-do-IT, to provide network asset realignment services for its operations in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.

The Ubisense solution will align Black Hills Corporation’s electric and gas utility assets with up-to-date basemaps to provide their operations with accurate network data to facilitate and support planning, design, customer service, maintenance and support across a wide area of coverage. The Project entails adjusting areas of approximately 2,430,493 nodes with accurate parcel information.

Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense said: “We are delighted to have been selected by Black Hills Corporation for this important project. Our innovative network alignment solution provides the fundamental building blocks of an accurate utility network. This will provide the foundation upon which other activities, such as service restoration, can be provided with a high degree of certainty of the integrity of the network.”