Network Computing: Asahi India Glass, one of the largest manufacturers of glass for automotives, uses specially designed metallic pallets to store and move the automotive glass across the supply chain, right from the production floor till the car manufacturer's assembly line. Thus, visibility of these pallets is imperative at all times, not only at the firm’s own facilities, but also at the customer's end.

Asahi faced a huge challenge with respect to monitoring and accounting for these pallets, since they are critical to production, are moveable, large in number and circulated in an open loop supply chain.

To improve pallet visibility, the firm partnered with Barcode India, which developed a turnkey solution for returnable asset tracking using Motorola passive UHF Gen2 RFID technology. Today, each pallet is mounted with RFID tags which carry a unique pallet ID number.

The gate portals are erected at strategic locations to capture the movement of the pallets. As a forklift carrying an RFID-enabled pallet passes through these portals for inward, outward or within facility movement, the tags are read by gate readers and processed by the application software. The pallet transactions are also captured at the customer's end at the time of delivery using hand held RFID readers.

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GPS Business News: A French start-up named Insiteo and specializing in indoor positioning has concluded the initial phase of a founding round valued at several million Euros. Investment has been secured from venture capital firm Emertec and a small group of private investors, including Anne-Sophie Pastel, former CEO and co-founder of auFeminin.com, with the support of ACTA Finance.

“The increase in capital will enable us to equip our first clients, including a major site in Paris attracted by the benefits of the Insiteo solution,” said Arnaud Masson, President of Insiteo. “Ours is indeed a disruptive technology able to deliver to most existing phones a perfect continuity of location services in environments where GPS is unavailable, including commercial centers, tradeshows, and industrial sites,” Mr. Masson continued.

Insiteo’s technology is an infrastructure-based solution that combines A-GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and, in some cases, FM radio to provide indoor, sub three meter positioning. “We’ve identified sites where our clients place a sufficiently high value on being able to deliver location-based information that they can justify a modest investment in site-specific infrastructure”, explained Stuart Strickland, vice president at Insiteo. “Unlike many RTLS systems – which, in some respects, this approach resembles – we do not rely upon any customized user equipment, so anyone with a phone can essentially walk in and participate”, he added.

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MARKETWIRE via COMTEX: CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM, Aug 28, 2009 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- "The introduction of the IBM/Ubisense system has resulted in accident prevention and overall employee safety improvement as well as adding to POSCO's reputation for innovation by leveraging UWB technology in a first-of-its-kind solution", comments Han Ku Park, project manager at POSCO in Pohang. "All the project objectives have been met on time and within the planned budget. The project team of IBM, POSCO and Ubisense have created the first of its kind in Korea and probably in Asia.
"The Korean version of Ubisense will allow us to satisfy the enormous demand we have witnessed since first introducing the product to research institutes in 2006", says HB Choi, General Manager, Ubisense Korea. "We already have deployments in 25 organisations and with immediate availability of a fully compliant product we will be able to satisfy the enormous pent-up demand we have seen from the Industrial and Manufacturing Market".
Korean Manufacturers include some of the highest volume automotive plants in the world, so the timing of the availability of Ubisense, already with a worldwide reputation at reducing costs and improving productivity for leading companies such as BMW, Honda and Caterpillar is pertinent, says, Simon Holloway of Manufacturing Consultancy, Bloor Associates.

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PR WEB: Vestac LLC of Brick, New Jersey announced today the general availability of the industry's first FCC approved, multi-modal Wi-Fi and Infrared (IR) Real Time Locationing System (RTLS). This unique, patent-pending RFID capability combines high accuracy Wi-Fi positioning algorithms and IR's inherent lower cost "choke point" tracking.

Brick, NJ (PRWEB) June 25, 2009 -- Vestac LLC of Brick, New Jersey announced today the general availability of the industry's first FCC approved, multi-modal Wi-Fi and Infrared (IR) Real Time Locationing System (RTLS). This unique, patent-pending RFID capability combines high accuracy Wi-Fi positioning algorithms and IR's inherent lower cost "choke point" tracking. Coupled with long battery life Vestac provides for a flexible, easy to deploy positioning solution for the lowest total cost of ownership. The system has already received advance orders from several large enterprises for tracking people, inventory, and equipment.

The 220Bi tag and 330Xi battery-operated IR transmitter support simultaneous tracking through Wi-Fi and IR, and overcoming the limits of traditional RFID tags. This allows for a low-cost deployment and delivers a high level of accuracy even in areas with relatively sparse Wi-Fi coverage. The 220Bi tags can be worn by personnel or affixed to assets and are available in several form factors, which can be customized to specific requirements. The 220Bi and the 330Xi transmitter form a unique "Deploy and Go" architecture which requires no additional network modifications or expensive wiring.

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RTLS For Dummies Book Review at amazon.com: RTLS for Dummies is the most comprehensive book written for anyone who is involved in the Location system business. It also provides an excellent study for anyone entering this business or educational institutions who could use it as a textbook or a reference for all RTLS related seminars.

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PRNewswire: Time Domain Adds Three New Ultra Wideband (UWB) Products to its PLUS Line to Meet RTLS Demand in Healthcare, Manufacturing, Logistics and Safety/Security Markets Making the case that size does matter when it comes to real-time location system (RTLS) tags and reader/antennas, Time Domain Corporation, www.timedomain.com, a leader in precision ultra wideband (UWB) (RTLS), today introduced the thinnest active wearable UWB badge tag for RTLS applications, an externally-powered original equipment manufacturer (OEM) tag, and a small reader/antenna as part of its PLUS 2.0 product line. These new UWB products bring additional flexibility to interaction-level asset visibility by broadening the types of enterprise assets that can be precisely located and the variety of work environments where PLUS sub-room level real-time location can be readily applied. With a thickness of 6.8 mm, height of 75 mm, and width of 37 mm, a worker or visitor can easily attach the vertically-oriented, LED-enabled PLUS 2.0 Badge Tag to a collar, shirt pocket, lanyard or belt. Users can verify their arrival and status at a location or interaction with another person or piece of equipment with the touch of a button on the PLUS 2.0 Badge Tag, which features a four-year battery life.

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