A global agri-machinery giant has taken Cambridge UK solutions technology from Ubisense for its manufacturing facility in Germany.

Fendt tractors, a brand of the AGCO Group with over 20 manufacturing plants worldwide, has adopted a production installation of the Ubisense location based manufacturing suite to streamline its facility in Marktoberdorf, Bavaria.

Fendt manufactures a wide range of agricultural tractors at the plant and has installed the Ubisense solution to provide real-time visibility of its production process, with particular emphasis on the throughput of complex gears and assemblies.

After a successful pilot scheme which started in late 2011, AGCO Fendt decided to rollout the project in the entire gear production hall.

The Ubisense suite provides automatic recognition of the gears being assembled as well as automatically detecting the entry into a work station as input for the new Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

The Ubisense technology eliminates the need to scan barcodes on gear work-orders, in itself not a value adding activity, and therefore helps to automate the manufacturing process as well as to improve the quality and productivity.

Each of the gears is equipped with a Ubisense tag, so that it can be located precisely through the manufacturing process by sensors mounted at fixed locations along the production line.

The tags, which have a unique identifier, are matched to the respective gear order number. The Ubisense manufacturing suite provides visibility of the manufacturing process by recording, handling and analysing the location data.

Stefan Hoffmann of Fendt, said: “We were looking to adopt the best in breed solution for our complex manufacturing process and found that Ubisense offered the precision, reliability and a thorough understanding of our business.”

Richard Green, Ubisense chief executive, added: “This win with Fendt is a significant vote of confidence in our location based manufacturing suite. Given AGCO Group’s extensive array of agricultural equipment brands, this represents an exciting opportunity for Ubisense.”