Industry Solutions

Warehousing & Logistics
RTLS & Safety Solutions

Real-time safety and inventory visibility for modern warehouses and logistics hubs.

Warehouses, distribution centres and cross‑dock hubs run on tight service levels and slim margins. Every lost pallet, blocked aisle or forklift incident directly impacts throughput and on‑time delivery. GridRTLS uses UWB indoor positioning and GPS outdoors to give you live visibility of workers, forklifts, pallets and trailers across the entire facility.

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Warehousing & Logistics

Logistics operations are becoming faster and more complex: e‑commerce peaks, same‑day delivery, multi‑client 3PL contracts and just‑in‑time manufacturing flows. Warehouses often span tens of thousands of square metres, with multi‑deep racking, mezzanines, pick‑towers, staging lanes and busy loading docks. Forklifts and pallet trucks weave between pedestrians, while pallets, totes and roll‑cages constantly move between storage, picking, packing and shipping.

Traditional WMS and barcode/RFID systems provide discrete scan events, not continuous visibility. They struggle to answer questions like: Where is this urgent pallet right now? Which dock door is that trailer at? How close are forklifts to pedestrians in this aisle? When mis‑shipments or safety incidents occur, reconstructing the real movement of goods and people is slow and incomplete.

GridRTLS deploys UWB anchors and wireless beacons in warehouses and yards, combined with wearable tags for staff and rugged tags for forklifts, pallets, containers and roll‑cages. UWB anchors and tags typically achieve indoor accuracy better than 30 cm in line‑of‑sight areas with update rates from 1–10 Hz, enabling precise zone control and collision‑avoidance. Battery‑powered “wire‑free” beacons can run for years, making them ideal for high‑bay racking and hard‑to‑cable areas.

On a live map, supervisors see the real‑time location of all tracked objects, geofences enforce traffic and safety rules, and analytics reveal congestion, dwell times and asset utilisation. Integration with WMS, TMS, ERP, access control and CCTV turns location data into a powerful optimisation and safety layer for warehousing and logistics.

📊 Key stats for this industry

Typical Warehouse Coverage: 10,000–80,000 m²
Concurrent Staff Tracked: 50–500 personnel
Tagged Assets & Load Units: 1,000–50,000 items
Typical Indoor Accuracy: <30 cm

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Operational challenges

Limited real-time visibility of inventory and pallets

WMS knows where items should be according to the last scan, not where they actually are. Mis‑placed pallets and staging errors lead to search time, line stoppages and missed departure windows.

Forklift–pedestrian collision risk in busy aisles

Forklifts, pallet trucks and tuggers share aisles and intersections with pickers and supervisors. Mirrors, painted lines and training help, but near‑misses still occur, especially at blind spots.

Inefficient dock and yard operations

Without live visibility of trailers, containers and dock doors, planners cannot easily see which shipments are waiting, which docks are idle, or where to send the next truck.

Time‑consuming cycle counts and audits

Manual cycle counts and investigations of inventory discrepancies consume labour and often fail to explain how and where errors occurred.

Managing contractors and visitors in high‑traffic areas

Drivers, maintenance and third‑party workers move through docks, yards and equipment areas. Paper sign‑in and high‑vis vests alone cannot ensure they avoid restricted zones or follow one‑way traffic rules.

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Business drivers

Improve safety and reduce incidents

Collision‑avoidance alerts, geofenced walkways and man‑down alarms reduce the risk of forklift accidents and help meet internal safety targets.

Increase throughput and on‑time performance

Real-time location of pallets, equipment and trailers cuts search time, prevents staging errors and helps operations hit shipping cut‑offs.

Reduce inventory losses and mis‑shipments

Continuous tracking of load units and better traceability across the warehouse reduces missing items, wrong‑lane loading and costly customer claims.

Enable lean and data-driven warehouse design

Location‑based analytics show true travel paths, dwell times and congestion points, guiding layout changes, slotting and labour planning.

📜 Regulations & safety expectations

Warehousing and logistics operations must comply with occupational safety, traffic‑management and sometimes food or pharma handling regulations. RTLS does not replace vehicle‑safety design, PPE or racking standards, but it strengthens your safety case with verifiable, time‑stamped location and exposure data.

Industrial UWB anchors and tags with IP66–IP67 protection and wide operating temperature ranges are suitable for dry, chilled and many outdoor yard environments, and are designed to resist interference from other radios and industrial equipment.

Location data should be managed under clear policies for access, retention and worker privacy, aligned with local laws and customer requirements.

🧩 Typical RTLS use cases

Common positioning and tracking scenarios for this industry.

Forklift & Pedestrian Collision Avoidance

Forklifts, tuggers and other vehicles are equipped with RTLS devices that measure distance to worker wearables and other vehicles. When separation falls below configurable thresholds, in‑cab and wearable alerts warn drivers and pedestrians, and all near‑misses are logged for analysis and training.

Environment: mixed
Accuracy: <30 cm for proximity alerts; 1–3 m for general tracking in aisles and yards.
Update rate: 0.5–1 s for collision‑avoidance logic.
Tracked objects: personnel, vehicles, mobile_equipment

Typical integrations: Fleet‑management or forklift telemetry systems, safety dashboards, CCTV / VMS, access control for restricted zones.

Pallet, Tote & Roll‑Cage Tracking

RTLS tags on pallets, totes, roll‑cages and containers provide continuous location and dwell‑time information from receiving to shipping. Planners and pickers can instantly locate urgent loads, avoid staging bottlenecks and reduce mis‑shipments.

Environment: indoor
Accuracy: 0.5–3 m to distinguish lanes, zones and rack areas; tighter where slot‑level tracking is required.
Update rate: 5–30 s for load units, tuned for movement speed and battery life.
Tracked objects: mobile_equipment, tools_pallets, materials_inventory

Typical integrations: WMS, ERP, TMS, yard‑management systems, analytics platforms.

Dock & Yard Visibility

Trailers, yard trucks and containers are tracked in real time across docks and parking areas. Operations teams can see which trailers are at which doors, how long they have been waiting and where empty trailers or containers are available.

Environment: outdoor
Accuracy: 1–3 m to identify dock doors, yard slots and staging positions.
Update rate: 5–30 s for yard equipment.
Tracked objects: vehicles, mobile_equipment, tools_pallets

Typical integrations: Yard‑management systems, TMS, gate/access systems, dock‑scheduling tools, CCTV.

Workforce Tracking & Pick Path Analytics

Pickers and supervisors carry lightweight wearables. The RTLS platform captures travel paths, dwell times and time spent by zone, helping to optimise pick paths, rebalance work and improve utilisation while also enabling man‑down and SOS alarms.

Environment: indoor
Accuracy: 0.3–1 m in aisles, pick zones and packing areas.
Update rate: 1–3 s for personnel.
Tracked objects: personnel

Typical integrations: WMS, labour‑management systems, safety / HSE platforms, CCTV / VMS.

📋 RTLS requirements for this industry

Typical coverage: Receiving and shipping docks, high‑bay storage, pick and pack areas, mezzanines, pick‑towers, consolidation zones and outdoor yards and trailer parks. For multi‑building campuses, coverage can be phased by building or area.
Personnel scale: From 50–150 tracked staff in smaller warehouses to 500+ pickers, forklift drivers, supervisors and contractors across large multi‑client facilities and multi‑shift operations.
Assets & vehicles: Dozens to hundreds of forklifts, pallet jacks, tuggers and yard trucks, and from 1,000 to 50,000+ tagged pallets, totes, roll‑cages, racks and containers depending on the level of granularity required.
Environment constraints: Warehouses include tall racking, narrow aisles, mezzanines and mixed indoor–outdoor spaces. RTLS equipment must cope with metal structures, variable temperatures (including chilled areas), dust and RF noise from Wi‑Fi and other radios. UWB anchors and tags with IP66–IP67 housings and wide temperature ranges are designed for such industrial environments and can maintain high accuracy despite multipath effects.

🛡️ Safety & reliability expectations

Safety‑related applications such as collision‑avoidance and man‑down alerts require sub‑meter accuracy, low latency (0.5–2 s) and high availability (target ≥99.9% during operating hours). UWB RTLS typically achieves <30 cm accuracy under open line‑of‑sight with update rates up to 10 Hz, suitable for forklift and worker safety.

Wearable tags for staff generally operate for 1–3 months per charge at 1 Hz reporting, while battery‑powered UWB beacons mounted on racking or as reference points can run for multiple years, minimising maintenance overhead.

System design should include redundancy, device‑health monitoring, and practical workflows for issuing, charging and auditing tags and anchors.

🛰️ RTLS solutions for this industry

📦 Devices and infrastructure used in this industry

SN2 UWB PoE Anchor

The SN2 is an industrial‑grade UWB positioning anchor designed for high‑accuracy real‑time location systems. It supports Standard PoE or 12–24 V DC power, delivers sub‑meter performance (<30 cm LoS), and features an IP66 enclosure for harsh indoor/outdoor environments. Multiple mounting options (ceiling, wall, pole clamp) make deployment easy in factories, warehouses, and tunnels. Optional 4G/Wi‑Fi backhaul, AI video add‑on, and sound‑light alarm extend the anchor’s capability for safety and analytics. (Actual performance depends on anchor density, layout, and site RF conditions.)