Since 2021, Situm has been working with Ancora, Ledisson, Ednon and Beta Implants to create an analysis tool focused on analyzing the performance of factories. This tool considers the behaviour of machines, IT systems, workers, and robots to increase the efficiency of industrial production.
SARATROF project (Analytical System for the Aggregate Performance of Workers and Robots in Manufacturing Operations) is a technological innovation initiative of Gaiastech, the innovation space of the Xunta de Galicia. It is also part of the Conecta Hubs 2021 program, funded by the Axencia Galega de Innovación (GAIN) and has the financial support of the European Union (co-financed by FEDER funds under the Feder Galicia 2014-2020 operational program). It also receives support from the Second Vice-Presidency and the Department of Economy, Business and Innovation of the Xunta de Galicia.
Year 1: obtaining geospatial information
During the first year, Situm’s work focused on sensory fusion and artificial intelligence to obtain geospatial information. Within the framework of this project, Situm obtains traceability indicators of the position of users and assets in the industrial environment. These indicators are processed and sent to the data aggregation and analysis meta-platform developed by the consortium for cross-analysis and extraction of complete information about the worker.
In addition, this year we visited the facilities of the end-user (Beta), analyzed the different workflows and movements, and deployed the Situm location system in these facilities for data collection. Finally, we developed web panels to consult the analytics of the number of visits per day/hour received by an area within an industrial building (developed in collaboration with Dimensiona during the project).
In collaboration with Prefapp, we adapted Situm’s cloud architecture to send the data obtained in real-time from the project to the common meta-platform and make them available through REST APIs that allow the integration of cartographic and geo-analytical elements. Finally, in collaboration with CITIC, work began on a tool to analyse the sensitivity of signal models to identify areas of malfunctioning of the geolocation system in this type of environment.
Year 2: geospatial positioning and analytics
During 2022, Situm technology (implemented during the first year) has been used to capture the positioning of the people involved in the manufacturing processes at the end user’s plant (Beta). A significant volume of data is generated that will later be used for extracting relevant geo-analytics (e.g., to analyze the traceability of production processes) and for integration with the rest of the subsystems. The architecture developed by Situm in collaboration with Prefapp is used and improved.
In collaboration with CITIC, the signal analysis tool whose development began in the first year is evolving and the data captured during the first year is being analyzed. In addition, this metric and tool, as well as the positioning system, were refined based on the analyses performed. Using Big Data techniques, it has been possible to detect all the positioning sessions with stability problems (over all the data generated) and thus obtain an overall percentage of the number of users whose positioning has stability problems.
In addition, work is starting on the new functionality of the same tool that will detect positioning errors due to interferences, sensitivity of signal models, or Wifi network deployment problems, even before they occur. To this end, the Situm calibration process is rethought, creating a prototype that allows us to validate the calibration while it is being carried out before deploying the productive system.
This year, we also extended the capabilities of geo-fence-based analytics with the help of Dimensiona. These analytics, especially in combination with indoor location systems, are used for a multitude of use cases. In the case of industrial environments, we have found that there are several use cases with common analytics needs that we have developed in the second year.
One of the most common use cases in the industry is to add the ability to generate and evaluate work standards in manufacturing. That is, to generate any measurement (e.g., time spent in a manufacturing phase, mobility between zones, number of manufacturing area changes, etc.) and, with it, to generate and evaluate work standards:
- Generation of standards based on the measurement of residence and travel times during their tasks.
- Once the standard is generated, we apply a measurement of occupancy and mobility against the standard to identify problems at specific points in time.
- This can be done as many times as you want to measure changes applied to the production process.
The basic analytics that have been developed in this second year, which serve to generate standards and measure the impact of improvements in production processes, are as follows:
- The detailed time of each stay in a geofence.
- Time spent per employee in each geofence.
- Traceability of an operator’s flow.
- The number of stays in a geofence per hour.
Year 3: Positioning and geospatial analytics
In this last year Situm has focused mainly on piloting the solutions developed during the project together with Beta to extract the maximum amount of intelligence from the production process.
In this pilot, the geoanalytics developed using real data have been put in value and the platform has been scaled according to the traffic of a real environment such as BETA’s production line.
Additionally, we have continued in the line of automatically detecting the scenarios in which the location system reduces its accuracy in order to indicate the possible need for corrective maintenance of the system.
New ideas have also been extracted from the pilot to continue improving the use of geolocation technologies in industrial environments for future projects, such as applying geolocation to materials and the use of trackers instead of cell phones for geolocation.
More info about European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)