Oil and Gas Construction Company

Background

Large companies from engineering, construction, and steel use expansive yards to store huge stacks of material and parts. So, gaining full control over where their assets are has a significant impact on productivity and efficiency. Imagine that you don’t have to send workers to search the site! You can locate your assets comfortably on a digital map and free your people for more productive tasks.

One of our North American customers faced this exact challenge. It’s a large construction and engineering company that builds offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. They prebuild assemblies on land and store them in a laydown yard the size of a small town. These components are typically stored for around three months. Then, they they’re loaded on ships and sent off to the sea.

Goals

There’s no storage area at the offshore rigs. Therefore, every component must be sent off just in time. That’s why the company had more than 20 workers all searching the site for parts.

Still, if assets were misplaced, it could take several hours or even days to find it in a yard of such size. You can imagine that delays and mistakes in such setup can be very expensive. This slow and costly process was one of the main reasons the company started searching for a real-time locating system (RTLS).

Challenges

The project was anything but simple. The company needed to track hundreds of large components. Accuracy was critical and the environment didn’t make it easy: steel, harsh weather, and constant movement. The system had to be rugged and wireless. Plus, scalability was key to keep up with shifting project demands.

Solution

After extensive market research, the company decided to deploy our RTLS with multi-technology Sense Asset+ tags and Senet’s LoRaWAN network to gain full yard visibility.

The tags are equipped with a combination of technologies including GPS, Bluetooth and LoRaWan for maximum precision in a large site while keeping long battery life. Because the site is in the south of the US, it’s very hot, bright, and dusty. For that, we created a custom solution and equipped each tag with a bright LED light and a buzzer, so workers can find the assets easily even on a sunny day or in the dark.

Solution features:

• Unlimited area coverage: LoRa can cover an area larger than 15 miles (24 km)
• Precise location: Thanks to the combination of GPS, LoRa, and Bluetooth
• Reliable signal: The signal is reliable even in steel enclosures or concrete buildings
• Easy picking: The asset can be found in a digital map triggering an alarm on the tag
• Durable devices: Tags are resistant to water, UV and extreme temperatures
• Security: Privacy, authenticity and message integrity are assured end to end

Results

Our heavy-duty RTLS has saved this construction company thousands of man-hours each year. It has reduced downtime, eliminated the cost of lost assets, and improved safety by keeping workers out of dangerous areas.

2,000 man-hours saved per year

Search time takes a few minutes instead of several hours or days

Looking ahead, the company plans to expand their RTLS applications and integrate the location data into other systems.

They can use RTLS for predictive maintenance to minimize downtime on oil rigs, where every minute of stoppage is worth thousands of dollars in lost production. The system can help detect potential repairs before it’s too late. It can also improve safety by automating hazardous tasks, blocking access to dangerous areas, and monitoring air quality to keep workers safe from harmful environments.

Our industrial RTLS system has proven essential, quickly delivering time savings, reduced waste, and improved safety. However, the RTLS is a versatile and scalable solution, and its users gain even more value when they expand its use.

If you want to learn more about how RTLS helps reduce search time and costs in industrial yards, read our Industrial RTLS whitepaper.

Key criteria for choosing Sewio

• Rugged wireless asset tracking
• High precision positioning
• Alerting capabilities
• Long-distance communication
• Reliable in harsh industrial conditions
• Easily scalable