Business View - August 2015 127
dents from happening at all? And if it could, what kind
of systems could be designed in order to make that
information available and actionable? And even if the
situation wasn’t dire, wouldn’t real-time information
also help improve a mobile asset’s overall safety and
efficiency?
Mike Heilmann is the Executive Vice President of Busi-
ness Development at Wi-Tronix, a company based in
Bolingbrook, Illinois that designs, develops, and de-
ploys mobile asset management solutions to rail,
marine, and commercial and industrial operations in
the United States and Canada. And answering those
riddles is the driving force behind his company’s mis-
sion: “To integrate the latest technologies that will en-
able businesses to improve the operational efficiency,
service reliability, and safety of their high-value mobile
assets.”
Heilmann, who founded Wi-Tronix with Larry Jordan
in 2004, explains the partners’ thinking: “In a typical
plant environment, they have process control systems,
and all kinds of monitoring and alerting and mainte-
nance solutions to keep the plant running and to know
what was working and what wasn’t. But companies
that were dependent on mobile assets did not have
that visibility. They really didn’t know how their asset
was performing or how their operators were perform-
ing. That was the piece that was missing. And the sys-
tems that were out there were disjointed and very as-
set-specific. There really wasn’t any way that a railroad
or an operator that had multiple platforms could look
at a consolidated picture of how their business was
running in real time.”
What Heilmann and Jordan saw when they decided
to create their company was the convergence of two
technologies: sophisticated micro-processor control
systems within the locomotive electronics environment
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Wi-Tronix
WHAT:
Wi-Tronix provides products and services
to wirelessly monitor high-value mobile assets
such as locomotives, industrial equipment, and
marine vessels.
WHERE:
Bolingbrook, Illinois
WEBSITE
:
LOGISTICS
