Semiconductor & High-Tech Fabs — RTLS Indoor Positioning

Semiconductor Fab Personnel Safety & Material Tracking System

P-Square delivers an RTLS indoor positioning system for semiconductor wafer fabs, integrating Wi-Fi, BLE and UWB. It addresses cleanroom staff duress, full headcount reconciliation during fire evacuation, lone-worker safety on night shift, and the search time for reticle pods, trolleys and metrology equipment. Measured positioning accuracy outperforms solutions from major international networking vendors, and the system is deployed across multiple fabs of a leading domestic semiconductor manufacturer (Hsinchu and Tainan science parks), supporting zero-incident safety goals and end-to-end process visibility.

Pain Points and Solutions

Pain PointDescriptionSolution
Personnel safety and duressChemicals, specialty gases and lone-worker zones carry high risk; locating a person in an incident is slow.Staff badge duress button pushes an alert with precise location, integrated with the plant Emergency Response Centre (ERC).
Fire drills and evacuation headcountDuring a large-site evacuation there is no way to confirm in real time whether every zone has been cleared.Live display of remaining headcount per zone and the location of anyone who has not reached the assembly point.
Night shift and lone workingWith minimal staffing at night, a prolonged period of immobility or a fall may go unnoticed.Automatic alerts on prolonged immobility, protecting lone workers.
Search time for high-value materialsReticle pods, trolleys, fixtures and metrology tools are numerous and move quickly; manual searching wastes production time.Real-time tracking of multiple material types, heat-map analysis of movement and trajectory replay.
Confidentiality and access controlVisitor and contractor movement must be controlled to prevent entry into confidential areas and industrial espionage.Geofencing with instant alerts on boundary crossing, plus visitor and contractor movement management.

System Applications

One-touch emergency duress
One-Touch Duress

Pressing the staff badge button sends a duress message with precise location, integrable with the plant ERC.

Personnel tracking and night-shift safety
Personnel Tracking

Live personnel positions with automatic alerts on prolonged immobility.

Zone control and geofencing
Zone Control

Geofences around hazardous and confidential areas raise instant alerts on crossing.

Visitor and contractor management
Visitor Management

Movement visibility and access control for visitors and contractors.

Material, trolley and AGV tracking
Material Tracking

Real-time tracking of multiple material types with heat maps and trajectory replay.

Solution Modules

Positioning TechnologyAccuracyDeploymentTag / DevicePrimary Application
Wi-Fi positioning3–5 mReuses existing plant Wi-Fi APs — no rewiring, excellent cost efficiencyHandheld terminals, Wi-Fi tagsBroad-area personnel positioning, material distribution by zone
BLE (low-power tags)1–3 mBLE Locators (one unit drives four read heads, cutting deployment to about a fifth)Low-power staff badge with duress button, asset tagsStaff duress, asset stocktakes, patrol records
BLE Locator + 5GRoom levelLocators combined with the plant private 5G networkBLE tagsWide-area real-time reporting, integration with facility systems
UWB ultra-wideband10–30 cmUWB anchors installed in critical areasUWB tagsHigh-precision personnel and equipment tracking, geofencing

Case Study

Leading Domestic Semiconductor Manufacturer — Cleanroom Staff Duress and Multi-Item Material Tracking

Personnel duress positioning was deployed inside a high-tech fab and integrated with the ERC emergency response system, while precise multi-item material tracking was deployed at another site to improve process visibility and production efficiency. Measured positioning accuracy outperformed solutions from major international networking vendors, and the system is now live across multiple fabs in the Hsinchu and Tainan science parks.

Highlight — fire-drill headcount: traditional fire drills rely on a manual roll call at the assembly point, which is slow and cannot confirm whether anyone remains inside. With Wi-Fi positioning, the remaining headcount per zone and the location of anyone yet to reach the assembly point are visible throughout the evacuation, dramatically shortening full reconciliation — and the site went on to take first place in the group-wide inter-fab fire-drill assessment. The solution reuses existing plant Wi-Fi APs with no rewiring, making it the lowest-cost route for an operating facility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Semiconductor cleanrooms are full of metal equipment — does that affect accuracy?
UWB has strong resistance to multipath interference, and combined with P-Square's AI Fingerprinting (RF Fingerprinting) algorithm — which improves accuracy by over 30% versus conventional trilateration in multi-obstacle, partitioned environments — stable precision is maintained even in complex plants.
Can we reuse the existing Wi-Fi or 5G infrastructure in the plant?
Yes. Wi-Fi positioning reuses existing APs with no rewiring and offers excellent cost efficiency; BLE Locators can also be combined with the plant's private 5G network to reduce deployment cost.
How does the duress function work, and can it integrate with our emergency response system?
The staff badge carries a duress button; pressing it pushes a duress message and location to the control room or Emergency Response Centre (ERC), and can trigger local audible and visual alarms.
How long do personnel tracking tag batteries last?
BLE tags sleep automatically when stationary, giving 6–12 months of runtime, with low-battery notification supported.
How does this integrate with MES / ERP?
A standard RESTful API and webhooks are provided to transmit personnel and asset positions and access records to MES, ERP or SCADA systems.
We keep losing track of materials and struggle to manage people on the floor. Can positioning fix that?
This is the most common starting point for RTLS. For materials: tag trolleys, jigs, moulds or pallets and the map shows which zone each one is parked in and how long it has been there, instead of sending someone to walk and look. The system also reports search time and idle dwell, so improvement work has numbers behind it. For people: real-time location from an ID badge or helmet tag supports zone headcounts, restricted-area alerts, and live roll-call and stragglers during an evacuation. The point is that both run on the same infrastructure — deploy once, and materials and people become visible together.
Experienced operators are retiring or leaving and their know-how goes with them. What can positioning and AI do?
A large part of an experienced operator’s know-how is actually routing and sequence — which machine first, how long to stay, where to go when something goes wrong. That never survives a handover document, and it walks out with the person. Positioning turns those movements into data you can analyse: historical trajectories and dwell times give the route an experienced operator actually takes, which can then be compared with a new starter’s to show the extra trips and the stations where they lose time. Paired with AI vision, the steps and postures themselves can be recorded as training material. To be clear, this is not for monitoring individuals — and in practice we recommend introducing it as de-identified group statistics, which meets far less resistance.

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