Which technologies do you consult on?

All of the major location, identification and IoT technologies: RTLS (UWB, BLE, Wi-Fi), RFID (passive, active and RAIN UHF), industrial IoT and sensors, GPS and GNSS, AGV and AMR robot fleets, and hybrid stacks that combine them. We recommend the right mix for each zone and use case, not a single technology.

Are you really vendor-neutral?

Yes. We do not sell hardware or a software platform of our own, and we take no resale commissions, so our technology and vendor recommendations serve your outcome rather than a product we need to move.

Do you work outside the UK?

We are UK-based and work across Europe and internationally, delivering in English, German and French. Engagements can be remote or on-site depending on the work.

What does a consulting engagement include?

Typically discovery and requirements, vendor-neutral technology selection, vendor evaluation and RFP support, ROI and business case, solution architecture, and an implementation roadmap. We scope each engagement to where you are.

Can you help after the decision is made?

Yes. We work across the full lifecycle - we can also deploy, integrate, and operate the system, so you can keep one independent team from business case through to live operation.

How do we get started?

Usually with a short call or a fixed-fee discovery to scope the problem, followed by a proposal with clear deliverables, timeline and fees. There is no obligation and no platform pitch.

How disruptive is RTLS installation to production?

Done well, minimal — most of the work happens during planned downtime. Anchor mounting, cabling and integration commissioning are sequenced around production. We've deployed RTLS at multiple plants without losing production time.

How do we get the operators to use the data?

Integration into operator workflow tools (MES screens, mobile devices) rather than a separate RTLS dashboard. If the operator has to switch tools to see RTLS data, adoption fails. We design workflow integration in stage 1.

What's the right pilot scope for a plant?

Single line or single cell, full production load, 8–12 weeks duration, with pre-agreed success criteria tied to OEE, WIP turn or cycle time. Avoid technology-only pilots; require business-KPI validation. See /method.

How do we handle works council consultation for staff tracking?

Build in 6–12 weeks of consultation before any production rollout. Works council representatives should be included in scoping conversations and in design reviews. We have run these for European manufacturing clients. See /compliance/works-council-consultation.

Can RTLS pay back at single-plant scope?

Usually yes for high-volume manufacturing, but the strongest paybacks come from multi-plant deployments where platform and integration costs amortise. We model single-plant and multi-plant cases during stage 1.

INZICHT · WERK TE DOEN

Installatiedirecteur — RTLS inzetten op een live-lijn.

For a plant director, RTLS, RFID and IoT promise WIP visibility, better OEE, lower cycle time and improved safety.

The job is to capture those promises on a live production line without disrupting throughput during deployment, and to integrate the data into MES and shop-floor systems so it drives real change rather than just generating dashboards.

This insight covers how we think about that job with plant directors.

Boek een scoping-gesprek van 30 minuten

De onderliggende vraag van de fabrieksdirecteur

Not "will RTLS work in a factory like ours?" — but "will this deployment move OEE, WIP turn or cycle time by enough to justify the disruption and capital,

with deployment risk to production held to acceptable levels?" Most failed plant RTLS programmes fail because deployment disruption was underestimated or because the system didn't integrate with MES sufficiently to drive shop-floor action.

OEE-drivers en RTLS-hefboomwerking

RTLS moves OEE through specific mechanisms. Availability: tool location, machine status, operator availability — RTLS shaves search time and idle micro-stops. Performance: WIP visibility shows bottlenecks in real time; balancing decisions get faster.

Quality: traceability of every part through every station enables root-cause analysis when defects emerge. Different use cases move different OEE components. We map each use case to specific OEE leverage points during stage 1.

WIP-zichtbaarheid — de meest waardevolle use case voor veel centrales

WIP tracking is often the single highest-ROI RTLS use case in manufacturing. UWB or RTLS-grade RFID tracks every WIP item by station, queue and operator.

Benefits: WIP turn improvement (often 20–40% reduction in average WIP time), cycle-time variance reduction, bottleneck identification, dwell-time analytics by station, FIFO compliance.

Pre-requisites: integration with MES for routing data; operator workflow design so floor decisions use the data. Without MES integration, WIP dashboards exist but don't change behaviour.

Veiligheid en mensentracking

Worker safety RTLS — forklift-pedestrian collision avoidance, fall detection, restricted-zone alerts — is increasingly common.

The deployment is technical but the procurement is political: works council consultation (in EU jurisdictions) is required for staff systems, and trust is the hardest thing to build.

Best practice: lead with high-consequence safety use cases (collision avoidance), avoid surveillance-feeling use cases (operator productivity tracking), and run worker representation through the procurement. See /compliance/works-council-consultation.

Integratie met MES — de gating-beslissing

RTLS-without-MES is a dashboard project. RTLS-with-MES is a process project. The plant director should require MES integration as a deployment gate, not a downstream feature.

SAP ME, SAP DM, Rockwell PharmaSuite, Siemens Opcenter and other leading MES platforms have documented integration patterns with major RTLS vendors. We design MES integration as part of stage 1 — see /integrations.

Inzet op een live-lijn

Deployment risk on a running production line is real. RTLS infrastructure installation (anchors, cabling, mounting) happens around production.

Best practices: install during planned downtime (weekend or shift change), validate accuracy in production-load conditions (not just commissioning hours), pilot on a single line before expanding, and have a clear rollback for any integration that touches MES write paths.

We've deployed on lines without losing a shift. See /for-plant-director for the dedicated plant-director persona page.

FAQ

Veelgestelde vragen

Hoe storend is de installatie van RTLS voor de productie?

Goed uitgevoerd, minimaal — het meeste werk gebeurt tijdens geplande downtime. Ankermontage, bekabeling en integratieingebruikname zijn rondom de productie geprogrammeerd. We hebben RTLS op meerdere fabrieken ingezet zonder productietijd te verliezen.

Hoe krijgen we de operators zover dat ze de data gebruiken?

Integratie in operator-workflowtools (MES-schermen, mobiele apparaten) in plaats van een apart RTLS-dashboard. Als de operator van gereedschap moet wisselen om RTLS-data te zien, mislukt de adoptie. We ontwerpen workflow-integratie in fase 1.

Wat is de juiste pilotscope voor een installatie?

Enkele lijn of enkele cel, volledige productiebelasting, 8–12 weken, met vooraf afgesproken succescriteria gekoppeld aan OEE, WIP beurt- of cyclustijd. Vermijd alleen technologiepiloten; vereist business- KPI-validatie. Zie /method.

Hoe regelen we consultatie met de bedrijfsraad voor het bijhouden van personeel?

Bouw in 6–12 weken overleg voordat de productie wordt uitgerold. Vertegenwoordigers van de Works Council moeten worden betrokken bij afgrenzende gesprekken en ontwerpbeoordelingen.

We hebben deze uitgevoerd voor Europese productieklanten. Zie /compliance/works-council-consultation.

Kan RTLS terugbetalen bij een enkele fabriek?

Meestal wel voor grootschalige productie, maar de sterkste opbrengsten komen van multi-plant implementaties waarbij platform- en integratiekosten afschuiven. We modelleren enkelvoudige en meervoudige fabrieksgevallen tijdens fase 1.

Laatst bijgewerkt: 26 mei 2026