Stop searching, start finding: The precision of UWB RTLS

Discover how IT solution providers can combine RFID identification with UWB location intelligence to track forklifts, reduce search time and strengthen safety in peak-season warehouses.

At the height of the fourth-quarter rush, a missing pallet or idle forklift is not a minor inconvenience. A warehouse manager may know that an asset is somewhere inside the building, yet an operator still has to search aisle by aisle while orders wait. Add temporary workers, crowded travel lanes and equipment moving at full capacity, and a simple location gap can quickly become a productivity and safety problem.

Many European warehouses already rely on barcodes and radio frequency identification (RFID) to identify inventory and record movement through key process points. Those systems remain essential, but they do not always provide the continuous, precise position of a moving asset. Ultra-wideband (UWB) real-time locating systems (RTLS) add that missing spatial context. For solution providers, the opportunity extends well beyond tags and anchors to site design, systems integration, analytics and ongoing support.

RFID tells you what you have. UWB tells you where it is.

That is the sales conversation in one sentence – but the strongest pitch does not position UWB as a replacement for RFID. Passive UHF or RAIN RFID excels at identifying large numbers of tagged items at portals, workstations or during cycle counts. It can confirm that a pallet passed through a loading door or help an employee locate an item within a general area. UWB is designed for applications that need frequent, high-precision position updates as an asset moves through a facility.

That distinction makes UWB particularly well suited to forklifts, pallet cages, returnable transport items, tools and other valuable or reusable assets. It will rarely make economic sense to place a battery-powered UWB tag on every low-value carton. A hybrid design can use RFID for cost-effective item identification and UWB for the smaller group of assets whose exact location, movement or proximity has operational value. The result is a more complete answer to both questions: what do we have, and where is it now?

How UWB RTLS creates location intelligence

A typical UWB RTLS combines tags attached to assets or vehicles, fixed anchors installed around the tracking area and a location engine that converts signal timing into coordinates using time-of-flight or time-difference-of-arrival calculations. Logistics Viewpoints reports that anchors act as fixed reference points powered via Power over Ethernet or battery, while asset tags typically run three to five years on a single battery thanks to their low duty cycle. Software can then display the asset on a map or pass location events through an application programming interface to a warehouse management, execution or safety platform. One documented European deployment shows the payoff: a UWB rollout at Bonduelle, a processed-vegetable producer, cut manual pallet search time enough to save hundreds of hours annually per warehouse and lift overall warehouse efficiency by 3%.

UWB can achieve centimetre-level accuracy under suitable conditions, but partners should avoid promising one universal figure. Performance depends on anchor placement, line-of-sight conditions, metal racks, reflections, calibration and the selected tag update rate. A moving forklift may require several updates per second, while a pallet cage that remains stationary for hours can transmit less frequently to extend battery life. The site survey and system design are therefore as important as the radio technology.

High-precision location services are the key trend behind this shift, and the growth curve in Europe specifically is steep. Estimates vary by research firm, but MarketsandMarkets projects the European real-time location systems market growing from $1.64 billion in 2025 to $4.71 billion by 2030, with Germany’s Industry 4.0 investment cited as the fastest-growing national market. That distinction – what you have versus where it is – is exactly the capability this investment is chasing.

Find, protect, optimise: turning Q4 outcomes into a managed service

For European solution providers, the value of UWB RTLS shows up in three areas: finding assets faster, protecting people and equipment, and optimising the operation over time. Each is also a natural entry point for a pilot – and a services relationship that can grow well beyond Q4.

Find: A location-enabled workflow can direct an operator to the correct forklift, pallet or tool instead of relying on memory, radio calls or a physical search. It can also reveal assets left in the wrong staging lane and trigger an alert when a load remains in a dwell zone beyond its expected time. The most persuasive business case starts with a measurable baseline, such as average search time, delayed picks or equipment utilisation.

Turning that baseline into a financial case for a client's finance stakeholder is straightforward. If ten minutes of search time recurs twenty times a shift across a hundred-person operation, that alone represents a meaningful, recoverable labour cost before a single accident or near miss is factored in – and reduced collision risk carries its own downstream savings in insurance, downtime and equipment damage. Partners who can put a number on the search-time gap, however rough, give the client a business case they can take to their own finance team.

Protect: Tags on forklifts and personnel can support geofences, restricted zones and proximity alerts. Eurostat’s latest figures show that losing control of a machine, tool or piece of transport and handling equipment was the leading cause of fatal workplace accidents across the EU in 2023, responsible for 27.1% of all workplace deaths and 21.7% of non-fatal accidents; in Great Britain specifically, HSE’s latest figures show being struck by a moving vehicle was the second-largest cause of fatal workplace injury in 2025/26, behind only falls from height. UWB data can trigger audible, visual or haptic warnings and, when integrated with compatible vehicle controls, support automatic speed reduction. These capabilities complement rather than replace traffic separation, training and established safety procedures.

Optimise: Once a customer can see how forklifts and materials move, location history becomes an operational dataset. Partners can help clients analyse travel paths, congestion, dwell time, idle equipment and repeated zone violations. Those insights can improve slotting, route planning and fleet utilisation while giving managers evidence for process changes rather than relying on anecdotal observations.

Begin with discovery. Ask clients how much time employees spend searching, which reusable assets frequently disappear, where forklifts queue and how near misses are recorded. Then select one bounded use case and pilot area – a receiving zone, high-value tool store or forklift route is easier to baseline and prove than an immediate site-wide rollout. Measure time-to-locate, travel distance, dwell time, zone violations or another outcome the customer already values.

If the pilot succeeds, the partner can expand the engagement through anchor installation, network and power-over-Ethernet design, software integration, dashboards, tag and battery lifecycle management, user training and service-level support. This creates a credible recurring-services opportunity based on maintaining business outcomes, not simply marking up hardware. It also gives the partner a natural path to extend location intelligence into additional workflows and facilities.

Build safety, privacy and compliance into the design

European deployments require more than a sound radio plan. If employees wear tags, their location can become personal data. Customers should define a clear safety or operational purpose, minimise the information collected, set appropriate retention periods and restrict access. Involving data protection, human resources and employee or works council representatives early can prevent a technically successful pilot from becoming an organisational problem.

Partners must also verify that equipment is approved for each intended market. The European Union’s harmonised UWB spectrum rules were updated in 2024, and UK or other regional requirements may differ. Product certification, cybersecurity, system availability and safe failure behaviour should all be addressed during solution design, particularly when location events influence vehicle warnings or controls.

How BlueStar can accelerate your RTLS business

An RTLS deployment touches multiple parts of the warehouse technology stack. BlueStar's warehouse and manufacturing portfolio includes mobile computing, barcode scanning, industrial printing, RFID, wireless connectivity and software relationships that can complement the location platform. Partners can engage their local BlueStar team early to identify approved UWB tags, anchors and software components, as well as the infrastructure required to integrate them with the customer’s existing environment.

BlueStar can also reduce deployment friction through configuration, kitting and staging services. Pre-assembling solution components, applying hardware settings, installing software and coordinating logistics can help partners deliver a more consistent rollout across multiple sites. With Q4 approaching, engaging BlueStar early matters more than usual: kitting and staging lead times shrink as peak-season demand rises, and partners who start the conversation now are better placed to have tags, anchors and infrastructure on-site before the busiest weeks begin. Combined with the partner’s local discovery, integration and support capabilities, those services create a practical route from a focused pilot to a repeatable location-intelligence offering.

Start with one costly location problem

As clients prepare for peak season, audit the warehouse accounts where people still search for critical assets, forklift movements remain largely invisible or safety teams lack data about vehicle and pedestrian interactions. Choose one problem with a clear operational cost, establish the baseline and design a pilot that can demonstrate improvement before expanding.

A well-designed UWB RTLS does not discard the identification technologies already working in the warehouse. It makes location actionable. Standard RFID tells you what you have; UWB RTLS tells you exactly where it is. For European solution providers, that shift – from knowing what an asset is to understanding where it is, how it moves and when it creates risk –opens the door to higher-value projects and long-term service relationships.