UK manufactures organisation Make UK collaborates with Malvern based FloWide

By Nicky Godding

13 October 2021

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Make UK the UK manufacturer's organisation has collaborated with Malvern-based technology start-up FloWide, on an innovative new tracking system for the CNC area of its Technology Hub in Aston, Birmingham.

The system provides a ‘GPS-like’ indoor tracking solution for the manufacturing shop floor. It is composed of electronic tags and anchors on the hardware, coupled with a customisable software interface. Tags are fixed on mobile items within the manufacturing shop floor: forklifts, trolleys, boxes or directly on the parts. The anchors are placed in key locations around the shop floor.

It means that a digital version of the shopfloor is accessible online with the real time location of every tracked item.

Stephen Mitchell, Director of Apprentices and Technical Training at Make UK said: “FloWide approached us two years ago as a start-up business trying to establish itself in the UK. Whilst other similar tracking systems exist, the appeal was the ease of simplicity of installation.

“We were looking at opportunities to showcase and use data-rich applications as part of our Apprenticeship Delivery, so it became clear we could help each other. The pandemic delayed implementation, but I am excited to now have this added capability in our training facility.”

Vincent Borgraeve, co-founder of FloWide, added: “We chose to install our system at Make UK because of their pivotal role in UK manufacturing. Our short-term goal is to bring manufacturers on site so that they can experience our solution and its benefits. Our long-term goal is to make apprentices familiar with location tracking. We strongly believe that today’s apprentices are digital natives who will accelerate the adoption of digital manufacturing.”

FloWide system helps manufacturers through three main types of applications: a tool finder: search for items on the shop floor and display their real time location on a map; automatic reporting: easily collate metrics (heatmaps, bottlenecks, spaghetti diagram and utilisation rate etc.) to provide real time insight and supporting workers: its system interacts with workers, guiding them through their work and alerting them before mistakes (misplacements) happen

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.