What use-cases are possible, what use-cases have been developed so far?

omlox is based on an open member community. One of its working groups is developing use cases, how the world's first open locating standard can be used. The variety of use-cases where omlox can provide value is almost endless and more than 140 use cases have been identified so far, as location-data is an important element in today’s hypermobile world.

Track and Trace Applications

Those applications locate all sorts of assets in various environments, from shopfloor, warehouse to yards or even in-between different sites. The type of assets is very manifold, from products, to tools, humans or means of transportation like AGVs, forklifts, trucks, or ships. Main benefits for those “Track and Trace” applications are reduced manual search, a more efficient asset usage, an up-to-date inventory, and less CAPEX.

Holistic Fleet management

November 2021, Arena2036 in Stuttgart: The experts NAiSE, Heidelberg Mobile, Safelog, Waku and TRUMPF have worked closely together to create an easy to implement, flexible and most important holistic fleet traffic management system. Setting up such a system can be quite tricky, but by using the standardized omlox interfaces, integrating and tracking all UWB based devices from different suppliers and adding additional one’s such as rented AGVs to cope with workload changes at any time becomes as simple as possible.

Order assembly with AR smartphone app by Holo-Light

Finding orders easy and getting a quick good overview in your production hall are key factors to remain competitive and make your production as efficient as possible. Holo-Light, a company specialized in AR/VR technology, connected their AR application by using the open omlox air-interface in the omlox core-zone. No need to attach QR codes, no preparation - the AR smartphone is automatically located and visually displayed navigation instructions can be followed immediately. The open infrastructure-based setup of the omlox core-zone is one of the main advantages: The position data is calculated on a central server based on the open omlox core-zone infrastructure. This open infrastructure allows for easy and immediate absolute positioning of the AR devices. In addition, in the omlox architecture, the plant manager retains control over all position data in his plant and can manage them centrally.

Location-based Automation

When things change their location, this is often also an indication of a certain step in a large process-chain, e.g., a product is been built in a step-based manner at different production station in a plant. Having access to location-data and been able to use geo-fencing and proximity events, can facilitate a location-based automation, for example by presenting the relevant information to a worker at a given station or by automatically generating shipment list, based on the goods on a truck.

Operation and Maintenance

Maintaining and operating mobile assets can be a challenging task, especially when they are used in dynamic indoor environments or when compliance rules need to be applied. Having the flexibility of omlox to locate mobile assets precise via UWB or any other locating technology and using the some locating technology to give maintenance staff an orientation in unknown locations, can streamline the complete process. This especially true when applying modern user-interface technologies like AR, where workers can navigate and find things hands free.

maintenance operation with HoloLens 2 AR glasses by Holo-Light

Automized, optimized and sustainable Material flow

In today’s production and intralogistics more and more autonomous robots are being deployed – stationary and mobile ones. It becomes a challenge to orchestrate the movements of all the mobile elements in a streamlined and safe manner. Omlox enables a holistic overview of the position and movements of all things in those environments and allows for an optimized material flow, beyond considering only one means of transportation or on asset type. In addition, this allows also to optimize the material flow considering energy consumption and carbon-footprint.

Intralogistics

Long search times, unpredictable pick-up and missing pieces in the cargo: MANN+HUMMEL was looking for a way to optimize its logistic process at their warehouse in Speyer, Germany. The idea: Implementing a real-time locating system to make processes and status updates transparent. The requirement: An open RTLS solutions to break down data silos, use different locating technolgies and enable intereoperability within the locating zone for future adaptations. In the end, 15 satellites and 5 scanners with an UWB module and a middleware that provides all locating data to the tracking/storage application made it possible to decrease search time by 600 hours per year. FInd out more about this reference installation!

Whitepaper: Exact Location Tracking for AR via omlox

omlox allows real-time and absolute RTLS data for AR devices, opening up a multitude of new use-cases. Cross-vendor usability within the omlox core-zone means each manufacturer can implement its own location-based services based on the standardized interface. Via the omlox hub API, the content for AR is delivered, and via the omlox air-interface the absolute self-positioning of the AR device can be done in seconds.

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