Asset Location

Technologies &
The Selection
Process
 Introduction

Today, organizational improvement isn’t just about cutting costs; it’s also about
optimizing processes. Asset location tracking does both. Organizations are
increasingly finding greater value in asset tracking, using the real-time data to
analyze trends and patterns related to asset use in addition to gaining better
control over their resources and operations. And the cost and complexity of asset
tracking technology has been greatly reduced in recent years to the point where
asset tracking is within reach of any organization.

But with the wealth of information currently available about asset tracking and
the range of solutions offered, it isn’t always easy to find the right asset-tracking
system for your needs. What solution makes the most sense for your company? For
your use case? For your budget and IT resources?

In this white paper, we’ll walk through the three general types of asset location
technology, review use cases for several different industries, and provide an
overview of AirFinder’s enterprise-grade RTLS solution, which may be right for you.

“Overall, we expect annual

shipments of asset tracking IoT
devices to grow from 22 million
to 70 million by 2022.”
- Mobile Experts

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 Types Of Asset Location
Technology: An Overview

Before you can decide on any specific solution, you need to consider the site at
which you’ll be tracking and your expectations for accuracy. To match your needs
with the most appropriate tracking solution, it’s helpful to think about asset-
tracking technology as having three general categories:

Precision-Based Real-Time Location

1
Systems (RTLS)

Precision RTLS allows tracking of assets to an exact, precise location—a “dot on the
map.” The tags used to determine location work by trilateration, or measuring the
distance of a tag from at least three readers or beacons (fixed reference points).
Distance is measured by the time it takes radio waves (or sound) to travel from the
readers to the tags (referred to as time-of-flight, or TOF measurements). Precision-
based RTLS is usually implemented through either ultra-wide band, WiFi-based
technologies, or using ultrasound.

These types of RTLS systems use a relatively wide bandwidth. Accuracy indoors is
related to signal bandwidth, so if you’re doing 80 GHz of 5-GH WiFi, you can often
get accurate location positioning within a few meters. That makes it useful for
applications like inventory management.

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 Precision-Based RTLS—Do You Need It?

Precision-based RTLS systems produce highly accurate location

results—which most people just starting out with asset tracking think
they need. Frankly, there are just a few scenarios where pinpoint
location accuracy is necessary; it’s usually enough to know what room
or what part of a room an asset is in.

Understanding the accuracy required for your tracking scenario is

important, because precision RTLS is expensive. It requires a larger
number of high-priced readers to drive its accuracy, and depending
on the technology used, the price of tags is usually higher as well.
Installation can also be a challenge. For example, if your solution is WiFi-
based, during deployment you’ll have to survey the full tracking area by
walking around with devices to determine how to calibrate between
the WiFi access points. (Not to mention that, because it rides on top of
your existing IT structure, it will also require IT’s involvement to get it up
and running.)

That said, there are situations where the expense could be justified.
If you’re looking for specific human-factor analytics—for instance,
tracking the movements of healthcare personnel down to the
centimeter to help improve your processes—precision RTLS would be
required to pinpoint where someone is moving within a specific room.
It could also be useful if you plan to track inside a very large, open
space (think aircraft production facility-size) that has no interior walls.
In that case, dot-on-the-map accuracy could be very useful, and the
amount of infrastructure required to achieve it would be fairly modest
because the signals won’t be blocked by walls.

If your indoor tracking area has well-defined spaces and you don’t need
pinpoint accuracy, precision-based RTLS may not be right for you.

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 2 Proximity-Based RTLS

Does it matter whether you can triangulate the exact position of a tracked item,
or do you just need to know its general location, at room level, within your facility?
Proximity-based RTLS solutions like AirFinder can accurately pinpoint locations
within about 100 square feet, making them ideal for use cases that don’t require
exact locations. AirFinder is also based on radio frequency communication, and
uses a tag (often a Bluetooth, or BLE, tag) to send out a transmission to a reader.
That reader device then transmits the location data to the cloud.

This method can detect the presence of an asset inside of a room. For example, it
could help a materials management team reduce the search zone for a machine
or tool from an entire building to just a couple of rooms. Proximity-based RTLS
systems are less expensive than precision systems, require far less infrastructure,
and generally have less expensive tags.

3 Outdoor Location Technologies

Many organizations would benefit from asset location tracking in an outdoor

setting, for tracking tagged assets for delivery, for example, or incoming
manufacturing materials. Or, they may need a multimodal location system, one
that works both indoors and outdoors, in areas of installed infrastructure and in
places where no infrastructure can be installed.

Where once people were tracking vehicles, today, technology like LTE-M is
making it possible to track packages and shipments instead—a necessity when
your assets are being transported by a third party. However, some technologies
have shortcomings as it applies to outdoor tracking. For example, GPS-enabled
devices won’t work without a clear view of the sky, so GPS can’t always be used
to track a shipment in the back of a truck. And while WiFi lookup can be used to
successfully track location in combination with another technology, on its own it
is a fairly short-range system.

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 Outdoor location tracking is usually best achieved with a combination of
technologies, including WiFi lookup, active RFID, LTE-M, and GPS. Hybrid
asset tracking solutions can now be customized to an organization’s specific
needs, for example, using short-range connections like Bluetooth coupled
with backhaul via LTE-M. Tailored solutions like these save money and are
more practical than relying on a single technology alone.

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 Asset Location Tracking:
Choosing A System For
Your Use Case

Among the most common reasons cited for using asset tracking are labor savings
and cost savings. It can help prevent theft, hoarding, and loss of supplies. The
less time people spend looking for things, the more productive they can be; they
can also (usually) deliver a better product or service to the customer. From an
operational standpoint, having more control over the whereabouts of your assets
does translate to savings and productivity gains.

But all that could be negated by choosing a tracking technology that’s not properly
suited for the task. One that costs too much or is overly complex will be a challenge
to implement, and could make it harder to realize the full benefits of asset
tracking.

Proximity tracking is sufficient for a majority of scenarios; very few use cases require
pinpoint accuracy. Below are some of the ways businesses in various industries are
currently using proximity-based asset tracking to achieve their growth goals.

Use Cases For Proximity-based RTLS

& Outdoor Tracking

Healthcare

Track medical supplies and equipment to improve patient care. RTLS can
give hospital personnel the real-time location of vital assets, which saves
manual search time and encourages more timely care.

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 Track equipment to optimize use. Every minute your equipment isn’t being
used is revenue lost. For example, hospitals that can track X-ray machines will
turn patients around faster, saving money.

Track patients from the time they check in. It’s critical to know where
outpatients are once they check in, both for safety and for return on
investment (ROI) purposes. Giving them an RTLS-enabled card or badge helps
providers serve them more quickly and efficiently.

Track provider location. By knowing where critical providers are at all times,
other staff may be able to save time. For example, a nurse may use a location
system to find the nearest doctor instead of paging a doctor who may be
several floors or buildings away.

Track usage patterns of your equipment to prevent unnecessary capital

expenditure. Using data gathered through RTLS, you can track usage patterns
of your equipment to make more informed decisions about purchasing
new medical technology. Knowing the location of your equipment also
helps prevent needless rentals from medical supply companies. Avoiding
unnecessary purchases and rentals could save hospitals hundreds of thousands
of dollars each year.

“Hospitals that invest in an asset

tracking system so they don’t have to
buy as many expensive IV pumps in the
first place should be able to easily earn
a 275 percent ROI. Moreover, that’s with
an immediate payback time.”
- Inc

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 Transportation & Logistics

Identify and track shipments. Lost, delayed, and misplaced shipments are
problematic and costly for transportation companies. Asset tracking can be
used for everything from verifying the bulk movement of large lots of cargo to
identifying a critical piece of machinery quickly and efficiently at an airport.

Track delivery staff members. The advantage of having real-time data means
you have visibility into where deliveries are at all times, allowing you to offer
customers more accurate delivery estimates.

Track the condition of shipments. The same technology that provides

location information can also help monitor the transportation environment,
ensuring that temperature-sensitive cargo reaches its destination intact. Or,
if conditions change en route, you can take corrective action immediately,
curtailing losses.

Manufacturing

Track and stage your materials. Ensuring your resources are staged
appropriately is critical. With proximity tracking you can see when supply
has dwindled at a certain staging point, which gives you advance warning to
replenish the material before production is interrupted.

Track for inventory management. Using outdated methods of asset tracking

is both time-consuming for employees and prone to human error. RTLS
proximity tracking can help reduce lost or missing inventory and has saved
some large companies millions of dollars every year.

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 Track warehouse materials for faster turnaround times. Warehouse
supervisors who can automate tasks to give the most critical customer
demands priority instead of using a traditional first in/first out system can
improve the customer experience significantly. Warehousing could then
become a value-add to the organization’s overall offering.

Construction

Track prefab materials. Contractors often build prefabricated elements

(trusses, beams, etc.) off-site and then move those pieces to the construction
yard when they’re needed. Using a proximity tracking system, you can track
prefab pieces starting from the time they’re created through the shipping
process, and even after they’ve been delivered to the construction site. You
can also get an alert when the piece is moved in the yard, which could
indicate if you’re on target for install.

Monitor materials/supplies to prevent theft. Theft is common at construction

sites. Small equipment tracking devices can help you immediately identify if
something is moved during off-hours and determine if the location the tool
was left at made it an easier target for theft. Additionally, Bluetooth or GPS
equipment tracking tags help act as a theft deterrent.

Track equipment usage patterns. General contractors typically work with

very thin profit margins. If costs are 1 percent too high, contractors could lose
money, just as their profit margin could double with a 1 percent cost reduction.
Location data can be used to optimize processes, for example, monitoring the
time spent running each scissor lift on a job site. If 10 lifts are being rented for
a period of eight weeks, but only six are used frequently, a contractor could
update future rental agreements to cut costs.

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 Track personnel for safety measures. By integrating location tracking
technology into employee and visitor badges, you’ll be able to alert anyone
entering a restricted area via SMS so they can avoid that part of the
construction site. Additionally, should you need to evacuate all or part of
your construction site, you can use a location tracking system to ensure all
employees and personnel are safe and accounted for.

Track workforce routes around the construction site. Are employees or

subcontractors regularly taking too-long routes to travel around the job site?
Using location data, you can update workforce routes to save time, and ensure
your future sites are optimized to take these things into consideration as well.

“Theft is a constant risk in the

construction industry. In the US,
statistics from the National Insurance
Crime Bureau indicate that up to $1
billion worth of equipment and tools
are stolen each year.”
- (Constructible)

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 AirFinder: A Proximity-Based Asset
Tracking & Outdoor Tracking Solution

The leader in accurate, low-cost RTLS, AirFinder is a next-generation tracking

system for monitoring and locating assets both indoors and outdoors. Many legacy
RTLS systems utilize costly hardwired infrastructure and proprietary technology,
but AirFinder can be deployed cost-effectively and incrementally, allowing you to
create value in your emerging market before scaling.

Here’s how it works:

AirFinder (powered by Link Labs) uses standard BLE beacons as location reference
points.

1 Reference point: A simple, inexpensive BLE tag is placed in every area of

location interest (for example, one per room).

2 Location aware tag: The very same tag hardware that is used by normal BLE
beacons can be reprogrammed to instead listen for reference points. The tag
then processes its own location algorithm and connects to an access point to
relay this information.

3 Access point: Tags (and other Bluetooth sensors) connect to BLE Access
Points, which are spaced about every 100 feet in a facility. These are much less
dense than reference points. The access points receive the encrypted location
(or sensor) data from the tag and send it to the server. The connection to the
server is either direct to cellular (LTE-M), WiFi, or Symphony Link. Symphony
Link is a LoRa (long range) wireless network. A single gateway can connect
to dozens of access points throughout even a large facility—it is common to
cover one million square feet or more with a single Symphony Link gateway.
This gateway can be connected to cellular, and it requires no IT integration.

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 4 Through the AirFinder UI or using the API, you can know where an object is
located and for how long.

AirFinder can also be used as an outdoor tracking solution. A large majority of

container tracking solutions on the market today use GPS location that is sent via
cellular (typically GSM) or satellite. But GPS tracking is expensive, power-hungry,
and requires the tracking device to have a clear view of the sky.

AirFinder can be used to engineer a shorter-range wireless tracking system—one

where the tracking device doesn’t communicate directly to cellular or satellite—at
a fraction of the cost of other solutions, including GPS. Instead, the tags would
communicate to a cellular transmitter in the truck that “knows” how to locate itself.
For example, if you wanted to track hundreds of containers being moved together,
you could add a cellular transmitter to just a handful of containers. Other devices
nearby could use a Bluetooth link to communicate their location, and those select
transmitters would backhaul their data. This would drastically reduce the number
of container trackers needed, but still provide information on the containers’
location.

The benefits of AirFinder’s proximity RTLS solution:

It uses flexible, inexpensive, open-source tags. These tags, called iBeacons,

range from $2 to $10 or more depending on size, battery size, and enclosure
materials, and are sold in hundreds of form factors, making application
customization simple. AirFinder can use any Bluetooth device and will soon
support Eddystone and other Bluetooth profiles.

It is highly secure. Placing hundreds of third-party WiFi devices on your

enterprise network is a security risk—regardless of what other vendors tell you.
AirFinder mitigates this risk by ensuring that no RTLS tracking infrastructure
touches your network or your customer’s network in any way.

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 The system can be deployed with no IT integration whatsoever. Many RTLS
solutions require complex IT integrations, which can slow down deployment
or halt it altogether. AirFinder can be installed without touching your existing
network, which means a deployment can be piloted very quickly.

It can easily be scaled. You can put more reference points up to increase your
accuracy. If you only need to know the room today, but tomorrow you need to
know the corner of the room, you can simply add another reference point.

You can also access your data through a web or mobile dashboard. The AirFinder
dashboard allows you to:

Track assets by room or location in real time.

Group iBeacon tags together, so you can visualize where the group of things
you care about are located.

Create custom alerts, so you can be made aware if a provider comes onto the
floor or a machine is taken off the floor. These alerts can be sent via email or
text message.

View custom reports showing where assets are and have been, including their
full location history.

AirFinder is a product division of Link Labs Inc. Link Labs creates connectivity
technology and solutions for enterprise and industrial customers seeking to
derive business value from the Internet of Things (IoT).

To learn more about how AirFinder can lower costs and improve efficiency in
your facility, contact us.

www.airfinder.com