Although it’s now almost two years old, the webinar titled Understanding RTLS: What it is, How it’s Used & What You Need to Know Before Deploying, produced by VDC Research and sponsored by Zebra Technologies, remains a particularly effective RTLS primer. It is available in recorded audio/video via Zebra’s Webinars link and is also available in the form of a 12-page VDC white paper.
VDC Research Group is a Massachusetts-based consultancy that covers AutoID (barcode, RFID, NFC and RTLS), plus embedded hardware and software systems. It provides market intelligence for technology investors, vendors and consumers, and specializes in research-based consulting services. L-Tron technology partner Zebra Technologies is, of course, an industry leader in delivery of RTLS technologies.
Questions covered by Understanding RTLS include:
- What is RTLS?
- What are the differences between asset tracking and RTLS?
- Who uses RTLS and for what?
- What to know before deploying?
VDC defines RTLS solutions as “precise positioning systems that not only enable a user to identify and track many different types of key objects, assets, items, people and/or animals, but also provide this information in real time through automatic and continuous feedback.” The key characteristics of RTLS information are: it is immediate, it is precise and it is constant. RTLS enables users to remotely know an asset’s identity, its past and present locations, the times of its past and present locations, and its past and present status or condition.
Asset tracking solutions and RTLS are not synonymous, however. RTLS includes asset tracking capabilities, but adds automatic, continuous reporting. VDC offers the example that asset tracking systems “can tell that an asset is in a room, whereas an RTLS solution can tell…where in the room it is located.”
RTLS has traditionally been used in six vertical markets – transportation, health care, government, retail, industrial and professional services. More recent markets include sports enterprises and livestock management. Most deploy RTLS to answer asset and human resource management challenges, while each also deploys RTLS to solve challenges that are specific to their verticals, such as safety and security, compliance and MRO.
VDC cautions that despite its obvious benefits, RTLS is not appropriate for every company. Questions to consider before deployment include:
- Does the enterprise have a sufficiently large inventory of mission-critical mobile assets to justify the RTLS investment?
- Is its supply or value chain sufficiently complex?
- Do current challenges include significant MRO or compliance requirements?
- Is optimum employee management critical to the success of the enterprise?
- Is RTLS already being used along other points of the enterprise supply or value chain?
VDC’s Understanding RTLS addresses these, plus many other questions and concerns, if you are interested in learning more.