In today’s fast-paced manufacturing environment, complexity is the new norm — from diverse product mixes and evolving sustainability goals to increasing demands for traceability and efficiency. To overcome these challenges, manufacturers must adopt smart, connected solutions that ensure quality, reduce errors, and drive operational excellence.
Smart Integrated Assembly is Atlas Copco’s roadmap to creating the Smart Factory and embracing digital transformation. In today’s manufacturing landscape, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has made the Smart Factory essential. It connects your Smart Factory solutions, enabling a comprehensive understanding of your facility, traceability, and more.
As the ultimate software for error-proofing manufacturing operations, Avantguard ensures efficiency and quality by improving assembly, detecting errors, and assisting operators with complex tasks and repairs, helping your facility thrive. When coupled with hardware and intelligent accessories, Avantguard addresses your manufacturing challenges directly, helping you navigate today’s complex manufacturing landscape.
That’s where Industrial Location can become a vital asset. When combined with Avantguard, you can experience less scrap and rework, better ergonomics, and streamlined assembly. We offer a broad range of Industrial Location solutions, tailored to meet the demands of various assembly needs, all of which will ensure that your tools are working in the right place at the right time and with the right parameters. With Industrial Location and Avantguard together, you will be an unstoppable force, ensuring production quality with every fastening.
In this article, we will uncover how you can pair Avantguard with each of our Industrial Location solutions to streamline production. Read on to learn more.
What is Industrial Location? Meet Atlas Copco’s flexible tool positioning system
Each of our Industrial Location solutions is uniquely designed, featuring distinct capabilities to enable flexible production while ensuring quality. These solutions are designed to accommodate a wide variety of products and variants in today’s increasingly digital environment, helping to reduce the risk of human errors and streamline your processes. By pairing one of our Industrial Location solutions with Avantguard—which will enhance product quality, boost efficiency and profitability, minimize downtime and costs, and shorten operator training time—you’ll have a powerful system at your stations.
The ultimate error-proofing software: Avantguard + Industrial Location Guidance
Let’s first begin with Industrial Location Guidance (ILG). ILG is a standalone error-proofing software that comprises most of our Industrial Location solutions. It combines positioning hardware, tightening control, and error-proofing software to ensure fasteners are tightened with the correct parameters—in the right location and sequence. For applications requiring specific sequencing, ILG tracks the exact position of the tool relative to the fastening point, confirming that every fastener is tightened to specification and in the correct order.
When paired with Avantguard, ILG delivers robust location-based process control while retaining the full suite of quality and traceability features that the systems offer. This combination is valuable for manufacturers experiencing missed fasteners, NOK tightenings, or inconsistent sequence adherence.
Avantguard enhances operator guidance through its tool interlock feature and digitalized work instructions, providing real-time visual guidance to operators during the assembly process. In this way, Avantguard can also prohibit operators from moving on to the next steps unless all required fasteners have been secured correctly—minimizing errors and rework. In applications where bolt sequencing is critical, ILG integrates with Avantguard to verify that fasteners are tightened in the correct order, ensuring process compliance and joint integrity.
For more information about Industrial Location Guidance, check out our dedicated Industrial Location Guidance page.
Bolt-level error-proofing: Avantguard + Industrial Location SpotPoint
Industrial Location SpotPoint 2.0 (ILS) is a unique and wireless bolt-level positioning system that helps you minimize tightening errors in your assembly line, down to each individual bolt, by using sensors and passive tags to detect the exact position of a tool within a work zone. ILS enables sequence tightening, provides visual operator guidance, and supports multiple programs and tools, allowing your operators to stay on track and protect your production from frequent defects and quality issues.
When used with Avantguard, this powerful combination helps streamline production for greater efficiency and accuracy. These solutions allow you to maximize assembly quality, improve traceability, enhance operator guidance, reduce rework and downtime, and support your industry and smart factory objectives.
With these solutions, you’ll get:
- Instant error detection to cut quality issues and downtime
- Full traceability of each product to ensure quality control
- More efficient training processes
Want to learn more about Industrial Location SpotPoint 2.0? Check out our dedicated Industrial Location SpotPoint 2.0 webpage. You can also read our article ‘Revolutionize Your Assembly Line with Avantguard and Industrial Location Systems’ to understand how Avantguard and Industrial Location SpotPoint 2.0 can boost your production.
Ergonomic error-proofing: AvantGuard + Industrial Location Arms
Industrial Location Arms (ILA) combine ergonomic design with precise tool guidance to reduce operator fatigue and ensure consistent tightening results. Available in several configurations, ILA is the ideal solution for applications prioritizing ergonomics. ILAs are torque reaction arms equipped with position tracking sensors that detect the exact location and movement of a tool in space. Powered by Industrial Location Guidance software, ILA provides physical support to lessen operator fatigue while ensuring bolts are properly secured.
With ILA, you get:
- Process validation
- Location-based tool interlocking
- Ergonomic support
- Reduced operator training time
Wireless assembly control: Avantguard + Industrial Location Mapping
Industrial Location Mapping (ILM) is a standalone, ultra-wideband (UWB) tool-location solution that ensures cordless tools only operate in their authorized areas—boosting safety, minimizing errors, and simplifying line rebalancing. What makes ILM different is that it tracks the real-time position of a tool within a defined work zone.
Today, tool flexibility is vital to many manufacturing facilities. As manufacturers transition from cabled to cordless tools, solutions such as ILM become a necessity, designed to handle a complete production line or parts of a line, wirelessly tethering your cordless tools to a production area. This ensures that your tools are only used within their designated production zones, preventing them from being moved throughout the plant and used on incorrect assembly applications.
ILM is also designed to work with moving lines, such as those found in the automotive manufacturing industry. This provides a wide range of manufacturers with peace of mind, knowing that with ILM, their tools are functioning in the correct stations, and with Avantguard, they will benefit from process control as they are guided through the entire process.
Are you interested in learning more about Industrial Location Mapping? Visit our dedicated Industrial Location Mapping webpage. Alternatively, you can watch our on-demand webinar, ‘Introduction to Atlas Copco's Industrial Location Mapping (ILM),’ to explore this impressive solution in greater detail.
Operator Guidance Buying Guide
Choosing the right operator guidance solution for your varying production demands can be difficult, but it doesn’t need to be. That’s why we created our Operator Guidance Buying Guide—a simple, comprehensive resource to help you decide which of our Industrial Location solutions is right for you.
In this guide, you will find:
- An overview of our operator guidance portfolio
- Recommended solutions based on application types
- Expert insights on the importance of eliminating scrap
Whether you’re in the middle of your Smart Factory journey or just starting, this guide will help you to decide which solution is right for you.
How can pairing Avantguard with Industrial Location be a game-changer for assembly?
Nearly all of our Industrial Location solutions pair perfectly with Avantguard, our server-level error-proofing software. With this dynamic duo integrated into your assembly, you will get:
- Wireless freedom while maintaining location-based tool control
- Digitalized operator guidance capabilities, streamlining processes
- Real-time assembly feedback, preventing errors before they occur
- Full traceability of the entire fastening process, keeping you in the know
With these solutions, you will take your factory one step closer to the future of Industry 4.0 while also maximizing quality, compliance, and uptime.
Get started today! Discover the unique advantage of Avantguard + Industrial Location
Modern assembly presents new manufacturing challenges. To stay ahead, manufacturers must adapt to these challenges and embrace smart connected solutions that work with you and your operators. Today, flexibility and control are not just a trend, but a vital tool. As your production evolves, Avantguard and Industrial Location deliver the smart foundation you need.
Download the Operator Guidance Buying Guide.
Contact our experts to find the best solution for your facility.
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