Category: Warehouse

New Finder Solution for Warehouses: Pinpoint What Matters, Effortlessly

Warehouses are dynamic, complex environments. Deeply stacked inventory, towering shelves, and a constant flow of goods create a labyrinth where even the most meticulous organisation can be challenged. This complexity often renders traditional item-finding technologies, like AoA (Angle of Arrival) and RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) trilateration, ineffective due to persistent line-of-sight issues and a multitude of signal reflections.

Enter the our new warehouse Finder, a specialised solution tailored to the unique demands of locating items within warehouses. Developed by BeaconZone, this innovative system leverages a decade of extensive experience in Bluetooth technology and a deep understanding of customer requirements in these challenging environments.

The Problem Solved: Finding What You Need, When You Need It

Imagine the frustration and wasted time spent searching for a crucial pallet, box or container. The Warehouse Finder is designed to eliminate these inefficiencies by allowing you to reliably locate Bluetooth-tagged items anywhere in your warehouse.

This translates into significant benefits:

  • Saves Time, Effort, and Cost: Drastically reduce the time and resources spent manually searching for items.
  • Eliminate Loss: Prevent the ongoing costs and operational delays associated with losing items you know are on-site.
  • Proactive Missing Item Detection: Be instantly alerted when items leave the site without authorisation, enabling swift action and preventing extensive searches.

The Warehouse Finder stands apart from existing solutions with its unique blend of simplicity, efficiency, and robustness:

  • Superior to QR Codes and Traditional RFID/Barcode Systems: Unlike solutions that require manual scanning and re-scanning every time an item moves, the Warehouse Finder offers automated, continuous tracking. Once an item is tagged, its location is dynamically updated without any additional effort.
  • Simpler and More Cost-Effective: Forget the complexities and expense of installing extensive gateway or anchor infrastructure. The Warehouse Finder operates as a standalone solution, requiring no local network integration, no dedicated servers or platform, and, crucially, no recurring subscriptions.
  • Outperforms Other Bluetooth Solutions: Where other Bluetooth-based systems falter in complex environments with line-of-sight obstructions, the Warehouse Finder is engineered to deliver accurate location data, overcoming the challenges that hinder RSSI and AoA systems.
  • Exceptional Ease of Use: Managing your assets is straightforward. Easily input new items or scan them in using existing barcodes. Warehouse floor personnel can quickly search for item locations using handheld units, putting critical information directly at their fingertips.
  • Unrivalled Maintainability: With typical beacon battery lifetimes exceeding 10 years and easily replaceable batteries, the Warehouse Finder offers a low-maintenance, long-term solution.

The Simplest Solution That Solves the Problem.

The Warehouse Finder represents a paradigm shift in warehouse inventory management. It’s not just another tracking system. It’s a precisely engineered solution designed to cut through the complexity and deliver clear, actionable location intelligence.

Currently in Beta!

We’re excited to be in the beta phase of this innovative solution. If you’re looking to revolutionise your warehouse operations and experience the benefits of precise, effortless item finding, please do contact us to learn more and potentially participate in our beta programme.

How Beacons Revolutionise Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Logistics and supply chain operations are constantly seeking innovative technologies to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and security. Beacons have emerged as a transformative solution, enabling a range of applications across the industry. Here, we explore how beacons are revolutionising logistics and supply chain management.

Real-Time Asset Tracking

Beacons allow for the seamless tracking of assets, ranging from raw materials to finished products, as they navigate through the supply chain. This real-time visibility helps organisations monitor the location and movement of shipments, optimise logistics processes and mitigate risks of loss or misplacement. By providing continuous updates, businesses can make more informed decisions and ensure the smooth flow of goods.

Enhanced Inventory Management

Inventory accuracy is a critical component of supply chain efficiency, and beacons play a key role in automating stock level monitoring. By reducing reliance on manual checks, they provide up-to-date insights into inventory levels, enabling businesses to reorder efficiently and avoid issues like stockouts or overstocking. This automation not only improves operational efficiency but also reduces costs.

Safeguarding Perishable Goods

For goods that are sensitive to environmental conditions, such as food or pharmaceuticals, beacons equipped with sensors monitor variables like temperature, humidity and light exposure. This ensures that items remain within safe conditions throughout their journey, maintaining quality and compliance with industry standards. Such monitoring is particularly vital for the cold chain, where temperature control is paramount.

Warehouse Optimisation

Within warehouses, beacons track the precise location of items, simplifying the process of locating goods and optimising storage layouts. By automating stocktaking and improving workflow, beacons reduce the time spent searching for items and enhance overall warehouse efficiency. This leads to faster order fulfilment and better resource management.

Improved Fleet Management

Beacons also bring significant advantages to fleet management by tracking the position and condition of vehicles in real-time. This data allows logistics managers to optimise routes, improve dispatch accuracy, and maximise vehicle utilisation. Enhanced visibility of fleet operations translates into cost savings and improved delivery performance.

Predictive Maintenance for Equipment

The health of equipment such as forklifts, cranes and conveyor belts is crucial for uninterrupted operations. Beacons monitor key metrics related to equipment performance, enabling predictive maintenance that prevents breakdowns. By receiving timely alerts when maintenance is due, companies can reduce downtime and extend the life of their machinery.

Ensuring Worker Safety

In large logistics facilities, beacons are used to monitor the location of personnel. This allows managers to identify potential hazards and respond to incidents promptly. By providing alerts when workers enter restricted or high-risk areas, beacons contribute to a safer work environment and help mitigate accidents.

Supporting Cold Chain Logistics

Cold chain logistics, essential for products like food and medicine, relies heavily on temperature control. Beacons provide continuous environmental monitoring, ensuring that goods are stored and transported under the correct conditions. This safeguards product quality and maintains compliance with stringent industry standards.

Enhancing Cargo Security

Cargo security is a top priority in logistics, and beacons offer robust solutions by tracking goods within secure zones and sending alerts if items are moved without authorisation. This level of monitoring reduces the risk of theft and bolsters security protocols, particularly for high-value shipments.

Process Control in Manufacturing and Logistics with Bluetooth Beacons

In sectors such as aerospace, automotive, logistics, transit management and process-driven manufacturing, the quest for efficiency and precision is unending. The integration of Bluetooth beacons into monitoring process control provides a significant leap in addressing these challenges. Traditionally, manual processes suffer from a range of issues. Bluetooth beacons offer a compelling solution to these age-old problems.

Firstly, there’s the matter of process visibility and optimisation. In complex environments like aerospace or automotive manufacturing, keeping track of components and processes is critical. Bluetooth beacons enable real-time tracking and provide data-driven insights, allowing for better decision-making and process optimisation. This technology ensures that every aspect of the manufacturing process is visible and under control, leading to enhanced efficiency and productivity.

A common issue in logistics and transit management is the misplacement of items; things can’t be located or are found in the wrong place. Bluetooth beacons counteract this by offering precise location tracking. This ensures that items are always where they need to be, thereby reducing the time and resources spent on locating misplaced items. In transit management, this translates to smoother operations and reduced delays.

Interaction, or the lack thereof, between components or processes, is another challenge that Bluetooth beacons can handle. In scenarios where two or more things are (or are not) interacting as they should, beacons provide real-time interaction data. This information is crucial in environments where the interplay between different components or processes is key to successful operations.

When it comes to counting, the issue often lies in having too many or too few items in a certain place. Bluetooth beacons facilitate accurate inventory management, ensuring that the right quantity of materials or products is always available where needed. This precision is particularly vital in just-in-time manufacturing processes, where inventory accuracy is paramount.

Time management is another critical factor in process control. A task taking too long or not long enough can significantly impact overall productivity. Beacons can track the time spent on specific tasks, providing insights into potential bottlenecks or inefficiencies. This data is invaluable for optimising workflow and ensuring that time is utilized effectively.

Lastly, sequence plays a pivotal role in manufacturing and logistics. When things happen in the wrong order, it can lead to a cascade of issues. Bluetooth beacons, with their ability to track and record sequences of events, ensure that processes follow the correct order, thereby avoiding costly mistakes and delays.

Tracking Forklift Trucks

Forklift trucks are a common theme or problem in warehouses. They are expensive, can cause damage and are potentially dangerous. Here are the top 3 scenarios we have come across when speaking to warehouse clients.

  • Tracking the usage of forklifts to make best use of what is an expensive resource. The solution is real-time monitoring of movement using a real time locating system (RTLS) to detect excessive durations of no movement.
  • Detecting if they crash into racking. For example, we had a customer with a warehouse storing dangerous chemicals. They needed to know about impacts with racking that could potentially displace and spill the chemicals. The solution is detecting unexpected excessive rack movement using a RTLS.
  • Detecting if they go missing. One client told us of forklifts going missing having been driven off in lorries in the cargo area. A RTLS can alert when forklifts go outside an area, inside an area or are no longer being seen.

These scenarios affect the company’s direct costs. Preventing just one incident can pay for the RTLS and more importantly prevent fines, injuries, lost days and medical bills.

Even when there aren’t accidents, a RTLS saves costs through improved efficiency.

Read about BeaconRTLS™

Learn about Beacons in Industry and the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)

Inventory Management vs Asset Tracking Using RTLS

Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) can be used for both inventory management and asset tracking. Here, we explore the differences between inventory and assets and the respective benefits of using a RTLS.

Inventory is stock, parts, materials and products that move through the company while assets are equipment, fixtures and furniture the company needs to do work. Inventory tends to be sold quickly to customers and leave the company while assets tend to be be kept longer term. It’s not just companies that have inventory and stock. Organisations such as government and health agencies consume rather than sell inventory and use assets to provide services.

While there are many systems that can be used to track the quantities of inventory and assets, very few track location. Knowing you have something but not knowing where it is leads to significant inefficiencies, especially in large organisations.

Managing both inventory, assets levels and location is important to avoid shortages and the need to over-stock so as to mitigate not being able to find items. In some cases items can spoil, due to expiry dates, which makes locating them more time sensitive. RTLS provides an automatic real-time view of inventory and assets so that quantities are known when items get stolen, thrown away or otherwise leave the site.

Inventory management provides better accuracy as it’s known what is in stock so the correct quantity can be ordered to meet anticipated demand. It makes it less likely products will be oversold, when not in stock, preventing end-customer disappointment. Having optimal stock saves money. Excess stock costs money until sold that can include overheads such as storage, handling fees and insurance. Excess standing stock is also is also presents the risk of loss by theft, obsolescence and unexpected damage. A better, real-time view of stock allows demand to be analysed and optimised. Having the correct stock ultimately keeps end-customers loyal due to a better customer experience.

Asset management ensures that assets don’t have to be over-purchased to compensate for inefficiencies in finding items. Knowing you have item(s) prevents unnecessary duplicate purchases. As the RTLS is real-time there’s no need for manual audits. The automatic auditing of assets also highlights items that have become lost or stolen. Knowing where assets are ultimately reduces labour costs because employees spend less time searching.

Read about BeaconRTLS

New P1 Plus Industrial Beacon

We have the new Minew P1 Plus in stock. It’s a sensor beacon designed for rough environments and is IP68 waterproof, IK09 shockproof and has a wider than normal temperature rating due to use of the included industrial ER14250H lithium battery.

This beacon has temperature and accelerometer sensors. It’s turned on and off via a magnetic switch. As with other Minew beacons it advertises up to 6 channels that can be iBeacon, Eddystone UID, Eddystone URL, Eddystone TLM and device info. 

View all beacons

Logistics and Manufacturing Pallet Tracking with Beacons

Tracking loaded pallets saves a significant amount of time, effort and hence cost in logistics and manufacturing. Pallets might contain stock, components or sub-assemblies. The top usecase is finding a particular pallet quickly. However, sensing need not be limited to pallets. Extending tracking to forklifts, racking and even people provides additional business benefits. For example, we have previously been asked to provide for the following scenarios:

“I need to ensure best use of my forklifts. Tell me when one hasn’t moved for 2 minutes.”

“I need to know if a forklift has crashed into racking.”

“I run a warehouse containing hazardous materials. If evacuation is needed, I need to know everyone has evacuated the building even if someone has temporarily gone off site”

These situations, and more, are solvable using Bluetooth beacons (In terms of asset tracking, beacons are sometimes called tags).

RFID and barcodes can also be used for tracking. However, the information is only as good as the last scan that might have been a long time ago after which the asset might have moved without being scanned. The advantage of beacons is that they repeatedly advertise so the information is always up to date.

Further advantages of Bluetooth tags are:

  • Being commodity items rather than specialist devices, tags and readers are relatively inexpensive compared to other proprietary technologies such as ultra wideband (UWB).
  • They consume very low power and battery lifetimes of 5 to 10 years are possible.
  • They are readable from handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets, providing for additional possibilities within the warehouse.

Software such as our BeaconServer™ and BeaconRTLS™ can be used to track what’s where over time, create notifications and integrate with your existing systems.

Once you have some current and historical data you can also start to do clever things such as automatically detecting and predicting over or under utilisation, finding pinch points or detecting valuable equipment about to be stolen.

Read about Asset Tracking for Manufacturers