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On track
Andy Ward of Ubisense shares the organization ’ s mission to transform physical space into SmartSpace ®
My background is in computer science , so I ’ d never really been involved with manufacturing ,” begins Andy Ward , CTO at Ubisense . “ My PhD focused on tracking systems , and I worked in industrial research . At the turn of the millennium , the dotcom bubble burst and the research lab where I was working shut down .
“ At that time , we ’ d been getting inquiries from industrial and military customers about real-time location systems that can precision track people or items indoors . Hence , we decided to try and see whether we could take the kinds of technologies we ’ d been developing in the lab and apply them from the position of a company of our own .
“ There ’ s no greater motivation than being made unexpectedly redundant . Although perhaps it wasn ’ t the best time to start a company , we had the people and the technical ideas , so we created Ubisense to try and commercialize that skillset and see where it took us . Initially , we looked at smart buildings and offices , in terms of remote operation for energy saving and security measures . As we developed the technology , we found that our initial target markets were not going to get the company moving . It took us a few years , but we reached the point where we realized that manufacturing would be a good target space for what we were doing .
“ If you consider a modern factory , there is a lot going on with a lot of items moving around . People need visibility into what is happening in those spaces and at the time , with the rise in digital transformation , leaders were starting to get their factories connected . While there was some visibility , there was still a lack of transparency around the movement and interaction of physical items . Hence , we thought there was a good opportunity to take our tracking technology and apply it to the manufacturing domain ,” he explains . “ The common factor in all the manufacturing work we do , which can extend to understanding how items are entering and leaving site , is that there ’ s a degree of human unpredictability in the loop , meaning you might not always know exactly where everything is . Some areas of a plant are completely automated , and everything happens as it should . Then , of course , there are numerous others that intrinsically have an element of variability . Although processes are becoming increasingly automated and more predictable , many operations in a manufacturing plant are still mediated by humans to one degree or another . This is where computer systems come in ; they offer greater visibility into processes and provide the data that can influence changes to operational efficiency .
“ The kinds of systems we ’ re building take data from a wide range of different sensors
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