– BlitzFunk at LOSYCO in Automotive Production –
Background
LOSYCO GmbH is a specialist in industrial conveyor technology and material flow solutions. For the production line of a major German automotive manufacturer, a total of 23 rail-guided vehicles (RGVs) were deployed, each centrally controlled and responsible for transporting a vehicle through various processing stations. The shuttles share their workspace with both humans and machines, placing strict demands on availability and functional safety.
Problem
A key component of the safety concept was an emergency shutdown of all RGVs with a 200 ms safety watchdog. This requirement resulted from the vehicles’ travel speed, permissible braking distance, and the overall risk assessment of the system. Previously used Wi-Fi solutions proved inadequate: roaming led to unpredictable latencies, packet loss, and short connection interruptions. As a consequence, the safety watchdog repeatedly triggered emergency stops. Elaborate radio-field planning or the use of leaky waveguides could only have mitigated the issues to a limited extent and would have come with performance compromises as well as substantial time and cost implications.
Solution
LOSYCO opted for BlitzFunk. Each of the 23 RGVs was equipped with a BlitzFunk client, and twelve access points were installed along the production line. No complex measurement campaigns or simulations were necessary; mounting the access points on the accessible pillars along the route was sufficient. Thanks to BlitzFunk’s coordination between access points, arbitrarily dense overlap zones are possible, ensuring robust coverage even in demanding areas such as the light tunnel and acoustic-insulation chamber. For conventional Wi-Fi systems, such environments would pose significant challenges.
With latency-free roaming, connection interruptions do not occur. The guaranteed maximum one-way latency in this installation is 48 ms – even when all 23 vehicles are moving and exchanging data simultaneously. This consistently stays well below the required 200 ms safety watchdog limit.
Because BlitzFunk operates Ethernet-transparently, PROFINET (including PROFIsafe) could be used without any changes. Installation proceeded exceptionally quickly: the entire wireless system was provisionally set up within four hours and released for final wiring and mounting the very same day – and the system has been running stably ever since.
Costs
The installation used twelve access points (list price € 1750) and 23 clients (list price € 1100). All access points support Power-over-Ethernet, and the clients could be connected directly to the existing power supply on the vehicles. Extensive infrastructure work – such as floor construction or the installation of leaky waveguides – was completely avoided.
Result
With BlitzFunk, LOSYCO was able to commission a robust, latency-reliable wireless system that transmits both safety-critical emergency-stop signals and control data well within the required timeframes – even in demanding production environments with continuous roaming and highly variable radio conditions. Installation was faster and simpler than planned, and the system has operated stably since the initial provisional setup. Thanks to predictable scalability, BlitzFunk is ideally suited for future systems with a larger number of RGVs.
“We are so satisfied with the collaboration that BlitzFunk is set to become our standard for intralogistics solutions. The fact that the system runs so smoothly – and simultaneously offers so much performance headroom – truly lets us sleep well at night.”
Project Manager LOSYCO, application in OEM production, September 2025
