The challenge​

Smart manufacturing depends on getting reliable production data out of equipment that wasn't designed to give it up. Older machines speak their own protocols (or none at all); newer ones speak too many. 4i Platform needed a hardware base its engineers could deploy across diverse plant environments — metals, automotive, general manufacturing — without rebuilding firmware for every site.

The solution​

4iDASH collects data directly from production line machines and feeds it to 4i Platform's analytics layer. The same hardware lineage powers two adjacent products:

• PLT (Production Line Tracking) — continuously tracks position and status of heavy equipment like steel ladles inside metals plants.
• WMS (Warehouse Management System) — RFID-driven inventory and asset tracking, in real time from the warehouse floor.

All three are deployed across customer plants worldwide, generating the production data that drives Smart Manufacturing decisions.

Why TinyCLR​

SITCore modules give 4i Platform a single validated hardware base — CPU, memory, networking, and the TinyCLR runtime — that drops onto custom carrier boards designed for each product family. Application code is C#, debugged in Visual Studio, and the same firmware modules carry across 4iDASH, PLT, and WMS hardware.

The tradeoff that mattered: predictable supply for products that live inside customer plants for years, with the runtime and toolchain stable enough that engineering effort stays focused on the protocols and analytics — not on bringing up a microcontroller.

About 4i Platform​

4i Platform is a leader in industrial IoT and automation solutions for manufacturing environments — guiding companies toward Smart Manufacturing through real production data. "With our solutions, companies will be able to make efficient decisions based on real data."

PLT

Production Line Tracking — real-time position and status of heavy equipment in metals plants.

WMS

RFID-driven warehouse management — inventory and asset tracking from the plant floor.