Sky-Trax System

The Sky-Trax System is designed to track the movement of vehicles, such as fork lifts, inside factories and warehouses. Sky-Trax automatically determines vehicle position with great accuracy and provides real-time position data to the driver. It can record precise location data for the movement of goods within a bulk storage area and guide the driver to the next pick-up or put-away spot. The Sky-Trax system captures and displays the location of all vehicles, aiding managers, warehouse operators and/or computer systems such as WMS (warehouse management systems) or ERP (enterprise resource planning systems).

Sky-Trax IPS Technology
STS consists of four components:
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Sky-Trax works like a GPS, but unlike GPS, it works reliably indoors. Sky-Trax technology is based on optical components instead of radio wave technology so the system is immune to radio interference and not affected by building construction materials or contents.

How It Works
The optical sensor is aimed at the ceiling and captures digital images of overhead position markers. Machine vision software decodes the image to recognize location and calculates the orientation angle and exact position of the vehicle. A wireless link transmits the data to the STS Controller which collects location data from all OPS sensors. The Controller stores data in a standard database and makes it available in real-time for high value applications. STS provides the capability of GPS and more. Rotational orientation, inch-accurate location, direction of travel, and velocity are available. And of course, STS works indoors where GPS is unreliable.

Inch-Accuracy
Sky-Trax System™ (STS) determines location in one, two, or three dimensions with accuracy necessary for almost any application. While one-foot accuracy may be adequate for vehicle tracking, single inch accuracy may be required to locate small objects.

STS determines position, orientation, direction of travel, and velocity. Even small movements are detected. These unique capabilities present new application opportunities and form a new vision of advanced supply chain operations.

By knowing, the precise location of assets in real-time, material can be monitored and managed with new exactness.

Sky-Trax Forklift Truck Safety System

Sky-Trax Forklift Truck Safety System accurately monitors forklifts movements to help avoid collisions that could be lethal or cause serious injuries to drivers or pedestrians. The safety system tracks the real-time movement of forklifts and other equipment inside warehouses, and automatically tracks each vehicle's location.

Sky-Trax Forklift Track Safety System™:

• Monitors zones for traffic
• Automatically notifies pedestrians using a traditional stoplight signal
• Identifies hazardous and non-hazardous areas of a facility
• Warns pedestrians and other warehouse vehicles approaching crossings, loading zones, and busy intersections of near by forklift traffic

Sky-Trax Forklift Truck Safety System™ Technology
Real-time vehicle location data collected by the STS engine can be used to illuminate crosswalk signals, audibly warn pedestrians, or notify drivers of approaching hazards.

With Sky-Trax Forklift Truck Safety System, you can:

• Track every vehicle
• Warn every pedestrian
• Alert every driver
  

Productivity

Expose Hidden Profit in Your Warehouse Operations
Most warehouse operations managers are painfully aware of the high costs and productivity killers in their fork truck fleet operations. Warehouse profits are tied up in the high costs of:

• Drivers weighted compensation and low productivity (i.e.: the high cost per move operation )
• Constant damage to equipment, facilities, and product
• Spiraling compliance, training, record keeping and maintenance costs
• Lease and capital purchase costs for trucks, accessories, batteries, chargers, etc.
• Fuel and energy
• Recruiting, retaining, and hiring
• High insurance costs, medical expenses, lost work time, and legal liability costs from fork truck-related injuries
• What about the cost of mistakes??- Inventory errors, missed shipments, inventory write-offs, disruptions, search parties, physical inventories, etc.

In today's warehouse environments, operations managers lack the technology to directly attack the causes of low efficiency and low productivity (visibility, minimal accountability, inadequate performance and operational data, and lack of automatic data collection).

Low Visibility - Managers responsible for fleet operations have little real time knowledge about where their assets are and what they are doing. When a truck and driver disappears down an aisle or into the back of the warehouse, the manager has no knowledge of what they are doing, what is happening, or even when he will see them again. This lack of visibility leads directly to the next problem:

Low Accountability - Fork truck operations are the last "cowboy" operations in the supply chain. Drivers are on their own for most of the day, out of sight, making spot decisions, and out of direct control. Most of the time managers do not even know where their assets are and what they are doing. To make it worse the manager has little reliable data to understand the productivity issues and to improve resource utilization and productivity, beyond broad metrics, personal observations, and anecdotes.

Inadequate Performance Data - Managers cannot manage or improve what they cannot measure. Indoor logistics managers have almost no objective data to use for productivity analysis, driver training and management, fleet utilization, predictive maintenance, or identification of abusive and dangerous practices.

Lack of Automatic Data Collection - To be trustworthy and accurate, data needs to be collected automatically without any effort or input required from drivers. Data collected by clipboard or even bar code scanners, is often riddled with errors or not completed at all. To make matters worse, data collection tasks rob drivers of time that could be used to perform the primary job of moving materials.

What is the solution?
Sky-Trax Inc. develops software solutions designed to address all of the costs associated with low efficiency and low productivity. These costs represent a form of untapped profit that managers can free up for higher revenues, and competitive advantage.

Imagine the difference - Having complete real time visibility from any computer to see where each asset is and what it is doing. In addition, complete tracking and reliable audit data of what each truck has done, where it has been, what its utility is, -- all collected automatically and presented in standard Operational Efficiency Reports(OERs) for analysis and optimization of operations. Finally, operations and indoor logistics managers have the data and tools they need to capitalize on the hidden profit within warehouse facilities.

Regain control and manage your fleet operations to expose the profit in your warehouse through:

• Fewer trucks
• Fewer driver hours
• Lower damage and maintenance costs
• Fewer mistakes
• Fewer accidents
• More productive moves per hour (lower cost per pallet move)
• Higher storage density strategies for better space utilization
• Reduce capital expenses by 10% or more by right sizing your fleet and improved management of your assets.
• Improve productivity or decrease operational costs by 30% or more with real time inch-accurate tracking of assets and materials.

Sky-Trax, bridges the information gap by providing the warehouse manager with hard data previously unavailable, such as:

• Historical forklift utilization reports
• Event capture and replay
• Real-time forklift location
• Current inventory location

With this additional data, the warehouse manager is able to more effectively match inventory needs with inventory assets, which will increase productivity and warehouse profitability.

Inventory Accuracy

Perhaps the most detrimental warehouse problem is that of keeping and maintaining accurate inventory counts. Too often warehouse managers find that despite elaborate warehouse management systems, it is not unusual for pallets to go missing.

Each year, imprecise warehouse inventory issues cost employers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost goods, and a staggering number of man hours associated with locating lost inventory.

Inch-accurate Sky-Trax solutions are designed to dramatically improve warehouse inventory accuracy, which results in more profitable warehouse operations.

Sky-Trax solutions enable warehouse managers to improve inventory accuracy by removing elements that are some of the leading causes of inaccurate inventory; like damaged floor labels, poor inventory controls, or inconsistent inventory reporting.

Sky-Trax solutions solve these problems by removing these obstacles before they can create bad data:

• Incorrect pallet location
• Did not scan the pallet at all
• Inaccurate reporting

As a result, Sky-Trax is able to ensure that pallet locations are properly scanned when an inventory action is taken; a pallet is picked or put.

In addition, since Sky-Trax is able to determine pallet and forklift locations within one-inch, warehouse managers are able to more efficiently route jobs to the proper forklift operators, thereby increasing productivity along with inventory accuracy