When nobody knows where the asset is, locantra has the answer.

An employee needs a particular container. He was certain it was standing right here, just yesterday. He walks the site once, then a second time. He asks a colleague, who shrugs. After ten minutes, a replacement container is quickly rounded up, even though the first one is probably still somewhere on the site.

Moments like these are the reason we exist. We are locantra, a solution from race result AG, and we have specialized in one question that goes unanswered surprisingly often at many companies: where is it right now?

Most of the companies we talk to don't have a resource problem. The tools are there. The transport containers are there. The equipment is somewhere on the site, too. What's missing is the answer to this one very simple question: where exactly? And that costs more than it first appears: ten minutes of searching here, a callback there, a container purchased twice. By the end of the year, it adds up to a figure nobody deliberately budgeted for.

Not a resource problem, but a transparency problem.

Why the obvious solution didn't convince us

The first impulse is almost always to capture more data. One extra scan, one more field in the form, a quick manual entry before a container is moved somewhere else. Sounds like a small addition to day-to-day business.

In actual operations, it rarely is. Anyone moving a container under time pressure is thinking about the next task, not about the documentation afterward. The more a process depends on disciplined manual data capture, the more likely it is that this capture is the first thing to break down as soon as things get tight. Not out of carelessness, but because when in doubt, it loses out to the actual work.

For us, that was the starting point: how can transparency be created without anyone having to think about it on top of their work? And how can it be done as simply as possible, without a lot of effort for companies?

What we built out of that

The answer consists of three elements.

graph LR

  A[Passive RFID tag on the asset] --> B[Track Box reads the tag]

  B --> C[Software shows location and history]

 

  classDef teal fill:#CFE8E9,stroke:#14757b,stroke-width:2px,color:#0c2e30

  class A,B,C teal

Passive RFID tags go onto containers, tools, or equipment. They work without a battery, are built for rough everyday use, and need no further attention once attached.

These tags are picked up by our Track Boxes: mobile readers that can be mounted on vehicles, gates, or buildings. No cabling, no power connection, no interference with the building structure.

Our software consolidates the data from the Track Boxes and shows where an asset currently is, where it was last, and which direction it is moving, down to the zone and without any manual input during ongoing operations.

An extra step for the person actually moving the container is deliberately not part of it. The data is captured along the way, in passing.

What working with us can look like

Because no fixed infrastructure is required, a project with us doesn't have to start big either. A single area is enough, along with a manageable number of Track Boxes and the assets that are searched for most often day to day. That's enough to check whether the investment actually pays off before anything larger is decided.

If it does pay off, the solution grows with you: more areas, more locations, and if needed, seamless integration with existing ERP, WMS, or MES systems. If it doesn't, the deployment stays small and manageable.

What you can expect from this blog

In the coming posts, we'll get more specific: how to position Track Boxes sensibly, which read rates are achievable in practice, and where the limits of the technology lie. Because RFID is not a cure-all. There are materials and environments in which physics doesn't cooperate, and that's part of an honest introduction, too.

We'll also tell the story of how locantra came about: as a solution from race result AG, which captures real-time data at more than 25,000 sports events in over 120 countries each year, and how that expertise found its way into asset tracking. Using concrete examples from our customers' daily operations, we'll show how individual companies approached the rollout, plus much more still to come in the near future.

Some of this can be explained in a blog post. Some is better covered in a direct conversation. If a specific case from your own operations has already come to mind, feel free to contact us directly.