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High value assets are constantly on the move in hospitals, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, airports, ports, and office parks. The inability to manage and control critical equipment, supplies, work-in-progress and personnel can result in significant costs, lost time, and operational inefficiencies. ZAPATA has partnered with PanGo to provide a Wi-Fi based asset tracking solution specifically designed to bring Enterprise Asset Visibility to Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Defense Industries. PanGo’s VisionOS Platform integrates with all forms of positioning technology, providing clients with asset management solutions specifically tailored to their needs. The PanGo Platform is the first location management platform to aggregate location data from a variety of RTLS and RFID sources and integrate it into the enterprise in a standards-based way. With the flexibility to add location providers as new and valuable locationing technologies emerge and mature, the PanGo Platform delivers the most robust solution for location-enabling the extended enterprise. Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) are used to track the location of high value mobile assets. RTLS coupled with management software allows one to make business decisions based upon the asset status and location. There are several technologies that can be used to provide both location information and status of an asset. These technologies include Wireless Local Network (WLAN or Wi-Fi), Active and Passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Ultra-wide Band (UWB), Global Positioning System (GPS), Infrared (IR), Ultrasonic Identification (USID), Optical Locating, and Radio Beaconing. Each of these systems has varying levels of granularity, currency, and stability. Granularity is a measure of the systems ability to report an accurate location. An UWB solution can provide granularity from 6-18 inches whereas a Wi-Fi technology may only provide a granularity of 15-30 feet. Currency is a measure of the frequency at which the system reports its location. Many of the technologies can alter the frequency of reporting from several times a second to many hours or days. Some technologies can only report when they are within the range of a fixed reader, such as with passive RFID. The reader in this case provides the energy for the tag to communicate and therefore location information is only available when the tag is in the presence of the reader. Stability is the degree to which the location information is repeatable over time. When the tracking device is stationary, does the reported location vary with each report? The ability to report the asset status (moving, low power, in-use, etc.) is dependent upon the technologies’ capability to communicate with the network. Wi-Fi, UWB, and Active RFID are good examples of technologies that can provide both location and sensory information of the tracked asset. For instance, a Wi-Fi tag on an infusion pump in a hospital can indicate that the tag has been pried from the pump through its tamper indication sensor. The RTLS system would then provide an alert via text or email to security personnel to respond to the incident. |