Manufacturing
Radios for plants and production floors
A plant is loud, big and busy. Maintenance is in one building, shipping is in another, and the line stops while someone walks to find the right person. We put production, maintenance, quality and shipping on separate channels that reach the whole site, with a screen in the control room to see and reach everyone.
Short answer
Do radios work inside a metal building?
Ours do, in most plants, because they run on cellular and Wi-Fi rather than a repeater that has to be heard through the walls. Inside steel-clad buildings we confirm signal on site and, where the cellular signal is weak on the floor, the radios use the plant Wi-Fi instead. We check it before you buy, not after.
The problem
What gets in the way
Production, maintenance and shipping each need their own conversation, but a single-channel radio puts the forklift traffic, the maintenance call and the line supervisor on top of each other. Conventional systems fade between buildings and behind heavy equipment, and every new building means another repeater. Phones do not survive the floor and do not get answered on it. When a line goes down, the cost is measured per minute, and most of those minutes are spent finding the person who can fix it.
How we set it up
How the channels are set up
We set up talk groups that mirror the plant: production supervisors on one, maintenance on another, quality and safety on a third, shipping and receiving on a fourth, and an emergency all-call that reaches every radio at once. Maintenance technicians usually get rugged handhelds; forklifts and yard trucks get vehicle units; shift supervisors get a lighter radio with a screen and an earpiece. The control room or plant office runs the dispatch screen, and the location map shows where each technician is when a call comes in.
Typical use cases
Where it gets used day to day
Maintenance dispatched to a stopped line without a walk to the shop. Forklift and yard traffic coordinated between the dock and the warehouse. Shift handover across three buildings. Quality holds communicated to the floor at once. Safety incidents reported on an all-call with the caller’s location on the map. Contract packaging and food plants keeping sanitation, production and shipping in step across a multi-building site.
Recommended solution
What we would recommend
Rugged handhelds for maintenance and production leads, vehicle units for forklifts and yard trucks, and a lighter display radio for supervisors covers most plants. The IR-700Y handles dust, wash-down areas and drops; the IR-350 suits supervisors who coordinate rather than lift. Plants that already issue rugged phones for work orders can run the Zello app on a Sonim device instead. In either case we test signal on the floor, including inside the steel buildings, before recommending anything.
Questions
Questions plant managers ask us
What manufacturers want to know before replacing the radios on the floor.
Will we hear anything over the machinery?
The radios are loud, and for the noisiest areas we supply noise-cancelling headsets and earpieces. The bigger gain is that calls go to the right channel: a maintenance call is not competing with forklift traffic for the same speaker.
We have three buildings and a yard. Does it reach all of them?
Yes. Because the radios use the cell network and your Wi-Fi rather than a repeater in one building, coverage does not stop at the wall. We survey each building before quoting, and we say plainly if a spot is weak.
Can we keep the radios we already have on the floor?
Often, yes. We can bridge an existing conventional system so the old radios and the new ones share a channel. See radio interoperability for how that works and what equipment it needs.
Are there radios safe for the solvent store or the paint line?
For classified hazardous areas we supply the IR-700UL, built to the UL 913 intrinsic-safety standard. We validate the certification against your area classification before it goes into service.
Do we have to license frequencies or install an antenna?
No. Conventional plant radio systems often need a licensed frequency and a rooftop antenna. Ours run over the carrier networks, so there is nothing to file and nothing to install on the roof.
Related
A typical plant setup
Maintenance and production leads usually carry the IR-700Y, supervisors the lighter IR-350 with an earpiece, and forklifts and yard trucks take the IR-50. The control room runs the dispatch screen with GPS and workforce location showing who is closest to a stopped line.
Plants with an existing radio system can keep it in the conversation through radio interoperability. Solvent stores and paint lines may need the intrinsically safe IR-700UL; the IR-series radios page lists the full range.
Get started
Tell us how your team works today
Send us your building list and how the floor talks today. We will come back with a coverage survey, hardware and pricing in one document.