Real-Time Locating Systems as key technology

With effect from March 29, 2018, Siemens has tak­en over own­er­ship of the com­pa­ny Agilion GmbH based in Chem­nitz. Agilion is a sup­pli­er of indus­tri­al Real-Time Locat­ing Sys­tems (RTLS) focus­ing on appli­ca­tions in pro­duc­tion, logistics
and main­te­nance. The com­pa­ny is rec­og­nized as a pio­neer in the field of RTLS in the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) fre­quen­cy spec­trum. This tech­nol­o­gy enables high­ly pre­cise local­iza­tion with­in a range of just a few cen­time­ters, track­ing of a large
num­ber of dif­fer­ent assets, and excep­tion­al­ly easy com­mis­sion­ing. The pre­cise real­time local­iza­tion of assets such as tools or vehi­cles will enable man­u­fac­tur­ers to opti­mize their pro­duc­tion and logis­tics process­es and so improve their qual­i­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and flexibility.
“By acquir­ing Agilion, we’ll be in a posi­tion to also offer real-time locat­ing solu­tions straight away. This rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion to our exten­sive offer­ing in the field of indus­tri­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and so to our Dig­i­tal Enter­prise port­fo­lio,” said Her­bert Weg­mann, Head of the Indus­tri­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion busi­ness seg­ment. “RTLS is an essen­tial key tech­nol­o­gy and a new step on the road towards flex­i­ble automa­tion in pro­duc­tion, for instance by pro­vid­ing dynam­ic self-orga­niz­ing pro­duc­tion con­cepts in the assem­bly of large-scale prod­ucts. Real-time locat­ing also enables the safe, effi­cient use of col­lab­o­ra­tive mobile robots.”
“For Agilion, this takeover is the ide­al step towards the roll­out of effi­cient and high­pre­ci­sion RTLS solu­tions on a large scale,” explains Andreas Wern­er, one of Agilion’s Direc­tors. “Togeth­er we’ll be able to assume a lead­ing posi­tion in the mar­ket for flex­i­ble automa­tion solu­tions, by link­ing the RTLS exper­tise devel­oped by Agilion with the strengths of Siemens in the field of dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automation.”
Uses for RTLS include a wide range of appli­ca­tions in com­plex envi­ron­ments. Used in a man­u­fac­tur­ing sce­nario, for instance, it enables pre­cise mon­i­tor­ing of the pro­duc­tion process and a trans­par­ent mate­r­i­al flow. Real-time data made avail­able using RTLS about the loca­tion and sta­tus of assets forms the basis for net­work­ing involved play­ers and logis­ti­cal process­es along the val­ue chain. This allows users to con­tin­u­ous­ly and auto­mat­i­cal­ly com­pare the posi­tion of every pro­duc­tion asset with the 3D mod­el of the prod­uct or pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment. Eval­u­a­tion and com­bi­na­tion of this “dig­i­tal twin” with oth­er infor­ma­tion – for instance using apps in the open IoT oper­at­ing sys­tem Mind­Sphere – per­mit dynam­ic opti­miza­tion of pro­duc­tion and logis­tics process­es. As a result, process­es can be more effi­cient­ly con­trolled, down­times min­i­mized and the risk of errors reduced. RTLS also pro­vides the foun­da­tion for total­ly new work­flows in pro­duc­tion, mate­r­i­al flow con­trol and logis­tics, for instance in con­junc­tion with Auto­mat­ic Guid­ed Vehi­cles (AGVs) or mobile robots. Ref­er­ence projects com­plet­ed for renowned indus­tri­al clients around the world tes­ti­fy to the effi­cien­cy and matu­ri­ty of the Agilion locat­ing system.