Semifinished vehicles locating in production line
Direct tracking of commercial and special vehicles' journey through the production phases
Global leader in capital goods innovation
A single platform for real-time tracking of internal flows, suppliers and production resources
The customer needed a hardware and software solution for locating and tracking vehicles inside the factory with the triple aim of:
- monitoring the flows of vehicles used indoors which feed and supply the production lines,
- locating the production vehicles in order to have a real-time picture of the progress for every semi-finished product
- tracking the supplier’s vehicles which enter the factory to unload the incoming materials
Accurate vehicle tracking in every area of the facility thanks to a combination of GPS, WiFi and BLE technologies
Ubiquicom proposed a solution based on the Ubiquicom uTag3, which, by using a mix of GPS, WiFi, and BLE technologies, enables the vehicles to be located with a high level of accuracy outdoors, inside warehouses, and even at critical points (for example, inside the cabins of the roller benches or painting ovens).
The uTag3 is particularly suitable for this scenario thanks to the extremely long-duration battery, which enables the movements of the vehicles to be monitored for many months before recharging, and the capacity to withstand extreme temperatures (of up to 80°C, which may be found in painting ovens). The uTag3 tags are linked with the vehicle nameplate using the NFC tag present inside and using the APIs of the Locator platform, by which the following functions are used:
- searching for a vehicle by nameplate and extraction of a list of vehicles by zone
- displaying spaghetti charts for analyzing flows a posteriori for optimization purposes
- generating reports on the stationary times in the various zones
- generating alarms in the case of a stationary time of a vehicle inside the factory which is too long.
In order to optimise the process and prevent the tags from being lost, an alarm has been configured, using geofencing functions on the tag, which, if the tag leaves the factory, activates audio and visual signalling and vibration of the tag so that the driver of the vehicle is aware of the fact.
More efficient internal monitoring and safer processes
A fleet of 80 uTag3 tags is currently used for monitoring the indoor flows and the incoming vehicles of the suppliers. The accuracy found during the test phases fully satisfied the customer, and the process of linking tags to the incoming vehicles and returning them from the outgoing vehicles was studied in order to reduce to a minimum the possibilities of error and the impact in terms of time necessary. The expansion of the project to the vehicles in production and use of the version of the uTag3 tags with e-ink display in order to manage the automatic assignment of the loading bay to the incoming vehicles is currently being evaluated.
Questions and insights
In an industrial vehicle production context, semi-finished products — chassis, cabins, engines, and other main components — pass through dozens of workstations and departments before becoming a finished product.
Without an automatic tracking system, production managers did not know with certainty which workstation each vehicle in progress was located at, causing bottlenecks, delivery delays, and difficulties in planning workloads.
Manual searches for vehicles in the plant required valuable time and generated frustration among operators, while the lack of historical data made it impossible to analyze and improve the production flow.
Ubiquicom's direct tracking system involves installing RTLS tags directly on each semi-finished vehicle or its transport support (trolley, hanger, dedicated cart).
These tags continuously transmit their position to the antenna infrastructure installed in the plant, allowing the precise location of each vehicle in the various production phases to be known at any time.
The Ubiquicom software platform shows the position of each unit being processed on a digital map of the plant, with real-time updates, movement history, and alerts for vehicles stopped abnormally in a workstation beyond the expected time.
The Ubiquicom solution allows vehicles to be tracked through all critical phases of the production process: receipt of main components entering the plant, pre-assembly and mounting of subsystems, painting and surface treatments, final assembly, testing and quality control, and the stocking area for finished products awaiting delivery.
For each phase, the system automatically records the entry and exit time of each unit, comparing it with the standard expected times.
This generates complete traceability of the production cycle for each vehicle, which is highly useful for both daily operational management and continuous improvement analyses.
Having real-time visibility of the position of each semi-finished vehicle transforms production planning from a process based on estimates to one based on real data. The production manager can instantly see how many vehicles are in each workstation, identify bottlenecks where parts accumulate, anticipate capacity availability in subsequent stations, and react promptly to delays or anomalies.
The Ubiquicom platform also provides automatic KPIs such as the average lead time for each phase, the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of the stations, and the Work In Progress (WIP) by department, enabling production control based on quantitative evidence.
For tracking semi-finished vehicles in production, Ubiquicom primarily used UWB (Ultra-Wideband) technology, which guarantees a tracking accuracy of less than 30 centimeters — sufficient to unequivocally distinguish which workstation each vehicle is located in.
UWB is particularly suitable for this context because it is immune to interference from metallic structures typical of production plants (machinery, metal shelving, overhead structures) and maintains constant performance even in environments with a high density of active tags simultaneously. The UWB anchor infrastructure is installed on the ceiling or columns of the plant, ensuring visibility over all production stations.
Yes, integration with the MES is one of the key features of the Ubiquicom solution for industrial production. Real-time tracking data is automatically sent to the MES, updating the progress status of each production order without manual operator intervention. The MES, in turn, sends Ubiquicom the information on the operations planned for each vehicle, allowing the RTLS system to alert when a vehicle remains in a station longer than expected or skips a process phase.
This bidirectional integration creates a digital twin of the physical production process, with continuous synchronization between the reality of the plant and the information system.