Zebra Technologies and IBS Partner to Provide End-to-End Safety and Logistics Planning Solution to Oil and Gas Industry

BOURNE END, England, September 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Partnership leverages Zebra's real-time location solution to improve speed and accuracy of mustering or evacuation events

Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA), a recognised global leader in solutions that extend visibility into operations and give a digital voice to physical assets, and IBS, a leading global provider of new generation IT solutions, today announced a partnership to provide the oil and gas industry with an end-to-end solution for real-time tracking and management of personnel and logistics. As a result, customers will secure real-time location of personnel, automated process counts and improved speed and accuracy in muster or evacuation events.

The partnership makes the Personnel Safety Solution (PSS) from Zebra Technologies the preferred technology to be utilised with IBS' iLogistics, a comprehensive personnel-on-board (POB) solution that controls planning, scheduling and tracking the deployment of personnel for the upstream oil and gas industry. Zebra's solution, which offers real-time visibility into the location and identification of personnel within the oil and gas production environment, improves safety practices and incident prevention. When used in tandem with iLogistics, real-time visibility is extended from the oil and gas production facility itself to also include logistical in-transit moves to and from off-shore facilities.

"We are excited to partner with Zebra and provide our customers with a more robust, end-to-end solution for efficient and automated logistics planning and tracking," said Ramesh D Nair, Sr. General Manager, Oil and Gas Business, IBS Software.  "As a result, our customers will experience increased productivity with minimal manual data entry, as the tracking information from PSS seamlessly flows into iLogistics. Moreover personnel will be automatically accounted for in real-time, vastly improving safety measures."

IBS and Zebra are already providing oil and gas customers with the integrated PSS and iLogistics solution.  Those organisations now have an automated process for counting and reconciling personnel in muster zones, allowing for a quicker identification and location of missing personnel and the elimination of human error. This improved personnel visibility and management can equate to reduced non-compliance fines, increased safety, better incident reporting, and faster evacuation management as well as a significant reduction in incident reconstruction and reporting costs.

"We are very pleased to partner with IBS, a recognised logistics planning leader in the oil and gas industry," said Stephen Logue, vice president of sales and services for Zebra. "The location data our RFID-based solution captures and feeds into the iLogistics application enables oil and gas companies to not only automate and enhance existing safety and logistics processes, but also glean powerful business intelligence for smarter business decisions."

About Zebra Technologies

A global leader respected for innovation and reliability, Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA) provides enabling technologies that allow customers to take smarter actions. Providing greater visibility into mission-critical information about assets, people and transactions, our extensive portfolio includes bar code, receipt, card, kiosk and RFID printers and supplies, as well as real-time location solutions. For more information about Zebra's solutions, visit http://www.zebra.com.

About IBS

IBS is a leading global provider of new generation IT solutions to the Travel, Transportation and Logistics industries.  A specialist in the domain, IBS offers a range of products and services that manage mission critical operations of airlines and airports that help them increase safety, maximise efficiency, improve revenue, manage growth and reduce costs.  SEI CMMI Level 5 and PCMM Level 5 assessed, ISO 9001:2008, TickIT and ISO 27001:2005 certified, IBS operates from 10 global business centers in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa.  http://www.ibsplc.com/