The Situation
A naval shipbuilder at a major Gulf Coast facility operates across a 1,800-acre campus — fabrication shops, outfitting halls, a large outdoor laydown area spanning multiple zones, drydocks, and berthing piers. At any given time, the facility has multiple vessels in various stages of production: structural fabrication, outfitting, systems installation, and final test and delivery.
The production system tracked planned locations for structural modules — where each fabricated hull section, deckhouse module, and structural component was supposed to be at each stage of the production sequence. What it couldn’t track was where each module actually was.
The gap between planned location and actual location was a daily production friction point. Work package teams arriving at a module’s planned location and finding it absent had two options: radio the yard control center to request a physical location search, or start a different work package and wait for the location to be confirmed.
The production plan assumed modules were where the system said they were. The physical reality was that modules moved for legitimate operational reasons — crane availability, weather covers, sequence adjustments — and those movements weren’t always recorded back to the production system.
The Decision
The shipyard evaluated RTLS solutions for two years before deploying ArgusIQ. The primary obstacles were the scale of the environment (both outdoor laydown and indoor fabrication areas), the security requirements of a defense contractor, and the need for the tracking system to integrate with the existing production management software rather than replacing it.
ArgusIQ addressed all three:
Scale: LoRaWAN coverage for outdoor laydown areas (long range, penetrates weather cover structures), BLE for indoor fabrication and outfitting halls, with the ability to see both in a single Space Hub yard map.
Security: On-premises ArgusIQ deployment within the facility’s operational network — no data transmission to external servers. Security review conducted per the facility’s IT security protocols.
Integration: ArgusIQ Asset Hub module records linked to the production management system’s module identifiers, with two-way data exchange: production system sends planned location; ArgusIQ sends actual current location.
The initial deployment scope covered 400 structural modules and 180 pieces of Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) across two hulls in active production.
The Deployment
Month 1 — Infrastructure: LoRaWAN gateways deployed on existing structures at key laydown area positions (cranes, buildings, towers) to achieve outdoor coverage across the full laydown area. BLE readers installed at zone transitions in fabrication and outfitting buildings.
Month 2 — Asset registry and tagging: Structural modules registered in ArgusIQ Asset Hub with their production system identifiers. BLE tags attached to modules using a ruggedized weatherproof mount designed for shipyard conditions (welding spatter, paint overspray, pressure washing).
GFE items registered with full government property documentation: contract line item number, government tag number, acquisition cost, responsible custodian.
Month 3 — Integration: ArgusIQ integrated with the production management system via API. The production system’s planned module locations visible in ArgusIQ alongside the actual RTLS location. Discrepancies between planned and actual location surfaced as alerts.
Months 4–6 — Pilot and expansion: Pilot operations with the first hull confirmed the RTLS accuracy and workflows. Production planners and work package coordinators trained on the ArgusIQ yard map interface. Expanded to the second hull and full GFE coverage.
The Results
Location Confirmation Time
Before: A location confirmation event required a radio call to yard control, a physical search by a foreman or runner, confirmation of the physical location, and communication back to the requesting work package team. Average time: 35–45 minutes. Event frequency: 8–12 per day.
After: A location confirmation requires opening the ArgusIQ yard map on a workstation or tablet and searching for the module identifier. The map shows the module’s current zone with the timestamp of the last RTLS detection. Average location confirmation time: under 2 minutes.
Daily production hours recovered from location confirmation: 4–6 hours of production time recovered daily.
Work Package Start Delays
Location-related work package start delays decreased by approximately 60% in the first 6 months of full deployment.
The remaining start delays reflected modules that were legitimately not yet in position (production sequence delays) rather than modules that were in position but the location wasn’t known.
GFP Audit Duration
Under the government property management system requirements, periodic physical inventory of all GFE is required. Before ArgusIQ, the inventory required 4 personnel spending 4–5 days walking the facility to locate and verify each GFE item against the property list.
After ArgusIQ, the inventory process uses the Asset Hub registry as the reference: ArgusIQ shows the last known zone for each GFE item. The inventory team verifies the top-priority items (high-value, long-since-detected items) physically and relies on the RTLS record for recently-confirmed items.
Audit duration: reduced from 4–5 days to less than 1 day for the same inventory scope.
GFP Unauthorized Zone Alerts
The ArgusIQ Alarm Engine was configured with a geofence alert for GFE items approaching the facility’s shipping and receiving dock zone — an area they should not enter without a documented transfer event.
In the first year of deployment, this alert fired twice. Both events were investigated; one was a legitimate transfer that had not been documented in the property system (corrected immediately), and one was a GFE item that had been mistakenly staged in the wrong area (resolved without loss).
Both events were identified before the government property audit. Neither resulted in a loss report or government property discrepancy.
What Changed Operationally
For Production Planners
Production planners shifted from assuming module locations based on the production system record to having verified actual locations in ArgusIQ. The planning meetings that previously required checking by phone call to confirm module positions now use the ArgusIQ yard map as the reference.
Planning decisions — which work packages to schedule for which crews — are made with higher confidence that the prerequisites are actually in place.
For the Property Management Office
The GFP property management officer’s daily accountability question — where is each GFE item? — is answered from ArgusIQ rather than from a combination of paper logs and periodic physical inventories.
The government Property Administration Officer’s access to ArgusIQ (read-only, limited to GFE records) gives the government representative visibility into property accountability without requiring the facility’s property team to generate manual reports for each inquiry.
For the Operations Director
The operations director’s production status visibility improved: the gap between the production plan and production reality is visible in ArgusIQ rather than hidden until a work package team reports a problem. Systemic location discrepancies — a pattern of modules being tagged to one zone in the production system but physically in another — are visible as patterns, enabling root cause investigation.
Talk to our team about ArgusIQ for your shipyard or defense manufacturing facility.