US-based Zebra Technologies Corporation, a market leader in barcode scanners and printers, has unveiled the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of business-class location solutions for the manufacturing and transportation and logistics industries.

Zebra MotionWorks automatically senses the location of assets and inventory, helping improve employee safety, streamlining production lines, and delivering actionable insights to increase productivity and efficiency, said a statement from the company.
 
Zebra MotionWorks is based on Zebra’s industry-leading RFID technology. For example, the company is the “Official On-Field Player Tracking Provider” for the NFL which demonstrates how Zebra delivers real-time visibility insights via RFID for organisations from the goal line to the assembly line and everywhere in between, it said.

Earlier this year, Zebra Technologies was recognised as a visionary in Gartner Inc’s first-ever 2018 Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services, Worldwide. According to the report, “clients are looking for a vendor that can be a trusted advisor to provide a single framework that integrates multiple technologies to solve multiple location issues while eliminating redundancy and providing a lower overall cost.”
 
Powered by Savanna, Zebra’s data intelligence platform, MotionWorks is a portfolio of flexible and customisable, end-to-end solutions that integrate operational and edge data from multiple sources – including Ultra-Wideband (UWB), UHF RFID tags, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and cameras – to create insights that mobilise action to solve business needs.

The portfolio includes innovative options such as the MotionWorks Asset solution, the MotionWorks Material solution and the MotionWorks Yard solution.

The key use cases for MotionWorks and RFID include:

•    The MotionWorks Asset solution allows businesses to track and manage important assets with detailed, on-time information about the location, condition, and state of their enterprise resources. Automated asset tracking saves time and money, making operations more efficient by ensuring assets are available when and where they are needed.

•    An aviation manufacturer saved nearly $1 million in replacement costs and improved productivity by using this solution to improve the visibility of their parts and significantly reduced the time spend searching for assets.

•    The MotionWorks Material solution helps manufacturers manage and automate the flow of material for their business. With seamless integration into other plant floor and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, it provides valuable insights into smarter material usage and helps ensure just-in-time delivery, creating operational efficiencies and reducing costs.

•    A European automotive manufacturer saved $750,000 in inventory carrying costs, improved labour productivity by almost 20 per cent and decreased on-hand inventory from local suppliers from seven days to two days with this solution.

•    The MotionWorks Yard solution facilitates the continuous flow of material and goods between transportation systems, distribution centres, and manufacturing plants. It also increases gate transaction speed, improving switcher productivity and ensuring the right trailer arrives at the right door at the right time.

•    This solution has helped a North American retailer reduce the average trailer check-in time by 80 per cent – decreasing labour costs and dwell time while improving yard efficiency and conserving fuel costs. By getting the right trailer to the right dock door at the right time, the retailer has improved supply chain velocity and enabled faster product movement to the retail floor.

•    Using the Savanna Location Engine, Zebra’s MotionWorks solutions provide enterprise-level scalability that can support thousands of sites and users, and hundreds of thousands of tracked resources, as well as the capability to locate Zebra mobile devices. These solutions provide data to other enterprise applications and include a user interface and console that can manage the system and offer reports, events, alerts and actions at the enterprise resource level.

•    As part of the MotionWorks announcement, Zebra is also introducing three new RFID fixed combination reader/antenna solutions, designed to track items as they travel into, through and out of a facility.

Matt Seltz, general manager of location solutions, Zebra Technologies, said: “With our global reach, we offer the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of location solutions ranging from simple beacons on packages to the most complex tracking of athletes in real time, helping turn edge data intelligence into business value.”

“Zebra MotionWorks helps manufacturers and transportation and logistics companies know the exact location and condition of their assets, people and goods to make smarter, faster decisions that improve operational efficiency, enhance business processes, identify new avenues for revenue growth and meet the market’s shifting demands,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service