Rush Tracking Systems, a provider of warehouse inventory-management solutions based in Kansas City, Kans., has purchased the equipment-monitoring product line of ShockWatch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Recovery Inc. The terms of the acquisition have yet to be disclosed. According to the companies, ShockWatch will now focus exclusively on its shipping and handling and cold-chain product lines, designed to deter mishandling, reduce damage and related costs, and reveal weak links within a supply chain.
The acquisition follows Rush Tracking Systems’ purchase of optical technology firm Sky-Trax Inc. (see Rush Tracking Systems Merges With Sky-Trax). As a result of its merger with Sky-Trax, Rush Tracking Systems has also announced that it has adopted a new name: TotalTrax.
TotalTrax will remain based in Kansas City, while its ShockWatch equipment-monitoring division will continue to sell its FleetControl Manager sensor systems from its plant in Graham, Texas, operating for approximately a year under its existing name, then as part of the TotalTrax solution. Sky-Trax, meanwhile, will continue operating out of Delaware.
Prior to the ShockWatch acquisition, TotalTrax’s product line already consisted of Rush Tracking Systems’ VisiblEdge RFID-based technology solution for tracking pallets and the goods loaded onto them, as well as Sky-Trax’s optical technology, which tracks forklifts’ locations within a warehouse. ShockWatch’s Impact Manager products employ Wi-Fi-based RFID and wireless sensor technology, enabling a company to capture any forklift impacts that may occur (resulting from a collision with a crate, rack or other item), identify when a forklift or vehicle is involved in an accident, and manage forklift drivers by requiring them to log in and identify themselves before the system will allow their forklifts to operate.
With this acquisition, says Toby Rush, previously the CEO of Rush Tracking Systems, and now TotalTrax’s president, the company can provide a complete solution to track any forklift collisions, the identity of a particular vehicle’s operator, and the location of a forklift and its cargo as it moves around a warehouse. Michael Kinnard, who had served as the CEO of Sky-Trax, and of the merged Rush Tracking Systems and Sky-Trax, has now been appointed TotalTrax’s CEO.
ShockWatch has been providing impact sensor technology for the shipping and warehouse industries since 1976. Initially, the company embedded sensors into a label affixed directly onto products being shipped.
“Through technical progression and innovation, we expanded the capabilities beyond impact sensors, creating a whole new class of products,” says Michael McMillan, ShockWatch’s VP of engineering and customer service. The latest products focus on providing sensor-based data regarding forklift impacts, in order to reduce the likelihood of products being damaged while being transported by those vehicles, decrease the chances of harm to racks in warehouses, and help maintain safety records for compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.
FleetControl Manager consists of a forklift-mountable unit containing an impact sensor and an access-control unit that plugs directly into a forklift’s vehicle-mounted computer (VMC). All data is collected and forwarded through an existing Wi-Fi network to ShockWatch’s EquipCommand software suite, where sensor data is interpreted and stored, and from which automated e-mails of activity reports can be issued to authorized parties. The system’s EquipCommand software continuously monitors and reports real-time information regarding equipment safety, utilization, productivity and maintenance, based on data culled from the forklift sensor.
As a lift operator begins driving, he or she must log in to the FleetControl Manager system before being able to operate the equipment. The system utilizes either a 125 kHz HID RFID card reader, a bar-code reader or a keyboard that a driver can use to enter his or her employee PIN code to obtain operator access.
The EquipCommand software not only interprets and stores data indicating when impacts are detected, linked to the specific person driving a particular forklift, but also tracks that vehicle’s productivity, based on the movement data for each driver.
The company has sold about 100,000 units worldwide to date, McMillan says, and typically works with 350 to 400 new customers or distributors annually.
The TotalTrax package will consist of ShockWatch’s technology, as well as the company’s Sky-Trax and VisiblEdge solutions for tracking each forklift’s location—and, thus, the locations of the goods that vehicle is carrying, employing a combination of both optical and RFID technologies. Optical sensors (cameras) that read optical markers are installed on a warehouse ceiling. The camera mounted on the top of the lift truck snaps photographs of the location markers at a rate of several photos per second as the vehicle moves, in order to calculate its location, direction and speed. Moreover, the integrated package includes a VisiblEdge RFID interrogator, mounted on the front of the forklift. With passive EPC Gen 2 RFID tags attached to the pallets or cartons, the system enables users to determine what a particular forklift is carrying—and, based on that vehicle’s location, where the items are located, and when and where they were put down by the vehicle (since the reader would cease to interrogate the tags at that point.)
According to McMillan, the company will now work to incorporate ShockWatch’s FleetControl Manager software with the TotalTrax software solution. The integrated software package will be given a new name, McMillan says, though such a name has yet to be determined.
Each component previously provided by Rush Tracking Systems, Sky-Trax and ShockWatch can be purchased separately, Rush says, or the entire package can be bought together. When the solutions are installed as a single package, he adds, the system will be less expensive, though the price range will vary widely, depending upon an installation’s scope.
“We have worked with the forklift market for (nearly eight) years,” Rush states. When working with multiple vendors, he notes, “It’s very hard to get all the parts together. With this solution, we take the complexity and cost out.”
For years, Rush says, “our vision has been to be able to put together an end-to-end smart-truck solution.”