Manufacturing & Logistics vertical
RFID and RTLS for manufacturing and logistics
Plants, warehouses and distribution centers run on materials, tools, containers and people moving at once. InThing traces jobs, parts and shipments, keeps tools and returnable containers in circulation, and keeps the workforce safe and fairly paid. ERP, WMS and MES get a record of what actually happened.
Industry problems
The material is in the building. Is it where production needs it?
Plants navigate tariff pressure and labor cost surges; in warehousing, labor is the largest variable cost. Yet WIP, kanban replenishment, returnable container loops and MRO inventory still depend on manual scans and paper travelers.
Shipping errors bring charge-backs and re-runs. And the people on the floor (operators, pickers, contractors and seasonal hires) are still counted on paper sheets, while forklifts and pedestrians share the same intersections.
WIP & jobs
Which station is the job waiting at, and is it on schedule?
Materials
Parts and raw materials physically present but operationally unavailable.
Shipments
Wrong shipments, ASN mismatches and charge-backs.
Workforce
Mustering, red zones, contractors and piece-rate pay.
Use cases
What plants and warehouses track with InThing.
Materials, tools, containers and people. Each use case page explains the outcomes, workflows, technology fit and proof.
Employees
Operators, lab technicians, pickers and hospital staff: presence, mustering and safety zones, with productivity measured in aggregate.
Goods & consumables
Finished goods, kanban and MRO consumables, lab supplies and consigned stock, counted without walking the aisles.
Parts & raw materials
Chemicals, components, drums, rolls and heavy parts: received, issued and traced to the lot, around the clock.
Plant tools & MHE
MRO tools, tool cribs, calibrated instruments, forklifts, AGVs and yard vehicles: issued, located and accounted for.
Temp workers
Contractors, vendors and seasonal staff: onboarded, escorted, verified at exit and paid on counts both sides can see.
Returnable items
Pallets, totes, racks, IBCs, dunnage and rental equipment: shipped complete, tracked while away and recovered.
Shipments & milk runs
Outbound loads verified box by box, inbound packages delivered to the right desk, and milk runs tracked loop by loop.
Jobs & travelers
Jobs, travelers, job bins and line-side carts followed station to station, with dwell-time alerts before schedules slip.
How InThing applies
From the dock to the line and back out again.
WIP visibility & milk runs
Jobs and travelers located across the floor; milk-run deliveries confirmed.
InFlow workflow
Production material planning
Kanban replenishment and material issuance in sync with ERP and MES.
InFlow workflow
Reservations & checkouts
Smart tool cribs and self-service check-out for tools and kits.
InVault workflow
Red zone violations
Role-based no-go zones around machinery and forklift–pedestrian danger points.
InStep workflow
Customer stories
Production and warehouse floors, made visible.
Continental Floral Greens
More than 1 million wreaths tracked every Christmas season (September to November) on 15 assembly stations, with workers paid per wreath. RFID credits each wreath to its station and shows the count live, so rejects trace to the station and time they came from. Delivered with Zebra Technologies and Redline Solutions.
1M+wreaths tracked per Christmas season
100%accuracy in total wreath count
99.7%production approval rate
Inhabitr
A furniture rental company monitors about 8,000 items through its Chicago warehouse with Zebra handheld and fixed RFID readers, validating shipping and receiving at the dock door to prevent wrong shipments and re-runs.
$18per day per dock door
Compliance & integration
Safer floors, honest systems of record.
- Workplace safety
- OSHA compliance zones, hazard-zone enforcement and lone-worker safety
- Retail supplier mandates
- Item-level RFID tagging for retail mandates such as Walmart’s, with in-line tag encoding and shipment verification
- Systems of record
- ERP, WMS and MES, including SAP and Oracle, through EAI-Bridge
- Workforce privacy
- InStep reports in aggregate by default, with role-based access and retention controls. See workforce privacy
- Hardware choice
- Zebra handheld and fixed RFID readers, printers and mobile computers, among others
Find your material blind spots
Bring your hardest material flow.
Raw materials, WIP, returnable containers, outbound shipments or the people who move them. We’ll show which sensor fits, what the data tells you and what changes on the floor.