Lipa Betoni Uses Bluetooth-Based RTLS to Manage Production

The 9Solutions system, says Satu Lipsanen, Lipa Betoni's CEO, "offers multiple benefits to us. The system does not require dedicated maintenance staff, as 9Solutions is monitoring its performance in real time." Management, he adds, can access data regarding the location of a particular element or worker, as well as a history of that item's or individual's movements, via the Internet. By knowing the location of its staff and elements, the company can provide more accurate quotations on future projects, based on the amount of time spent on steps during previous jobs. The staff location data also enables the firm to analyze and then improve on an employee's efficiency, based on where that person appeared to be spending the bulk of his or her time.

The uTag functions as an ID badge, and includes buttons that can be pressed to call for help or indicate work status.

When 9Solutions was founded more than two years ago, its mission was to design a system to track assets indoors. The company investigated the use of RFID and Wi-Fi technology, but concluded that these options required too much infrastructure—in the case of RFID, a reader network would have to be installed, while with Wi-Fi, additional access points would typically need to be provided to an existing system. "RFID is very good for a passive solution, but very heavy on infrastructure," Kylmänen says. By late 2009, the company began developing a Bluetooth solution involving tags and nodes, designed and manufactured by 9Solutions.

Last week, 9Solutions announced its next-generation solution enabling the IPCS system to run on Apple's iPhone 4S and Motorola's Droid Razr. The latest version of 9Solutions' system includes an app for the iPhone 4S and also supports Bluetooth 4.0 technology. This new system will operate with any mobile phone supporting Bluetooth 4.0, thereby enabling the phone to act as an IPCS tag. This will allow the location of individuals, for example, to be tracked within a specific facility via their phones, while using the same 9Solutions IPCS software and cloud-based server. In such a case, the phone's Bluetooth chip would transmit a unique identifier, and the user's data, such as that person's name, could be input to link to that ID. He or she could then move about the facility at permitted access points, and if that individual were not permitted within a specific location, the system could provide an alert on the phone, or through the illumination of a light or an audible alarm installed onsite. Sid Shaw, the product marketing manager for low-power RF at Texas Instruments—which manufactures the CC2540, a low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 chip used in the IPCS tag—describes 9Solution's technology as "robust, sophisticated and powerful, with some very useful applications."