Construction companies are constantly struggling with how to manage their tools and equipment. Tools and equipment leave and never come back. The bigger the operation, the more difficult this becomes to manage. But the good news…there is a solution to help. Asset tracking using RFID in construction is a great way to efficiently track tools and equipment leaving your warehouse and provide up-to-date information on your entire tool and equipment database.
Why use RFID Tool Tracking for Construction Equipment?
Let’s face it, the old-school way of checking out and checking in tools and equipment to a job site or employee with pen and paper doesn’t work. Or even worse, tribal knowledge and the honor system could derail your operation.
Asset tracking using RFID in construction allows you to know where or who your assets are assigned to. This brings better visibility to your entire inventory. Now you can hold employees accountable and purchase the necessary pieces of equipment.
Benefits of RFID tool and equipment tracking software:
- Eliminate unnecessary tool and equipment purchases
- Preventative maintenance scheduling
- Check in and check out tools and equipment
In Case You Missed It: 3 Reasons to Implement Tool Tracking
What to look for in RFID tool and equipment tracking software?
There are many different types of RFID tool tracking software on the market. The best tool tracking software for RFID in construction has all of these key features:
Unlimited Sub Users
To keep your team connected and up to date on your tool and equipment inventory, it is important to consider how many sub-users will access the tool tracking software. When searching for software, it is a great benefit to find a system that allows for unlimited sub-users. This gives every employee access to the most recent asset information and it keeps your team aligned.
Reporting for RFID in Construction
Running reports and pulling the proper data from the construction tool and equipment software is critical to making decisions. Building reports gives you the flexibility to send and view reports that matters most to your business. For instance, if you need to know every tool and equipment that is checked out to a specific job site, you can easily pull an on-demand report or schedule an automated report to be sent directly to your inbox.
Preventative Maintenance Scheduling
Easily schedule recurring maintenance for construction equipment to keep them performing at peak performance. To get the best ROI on your tool and equipment purchases, it is important to stay up to date on the preventative maintenance schedule. With asset tracking software, you can automate this process to ensure you never miss scheduled maintenance.
Benefits of RFID Tool Tracking for Businesses
There are several reasons that your organization would want to begin using RFID tech for tool inventory. This section will cover how a passive UHF RFID tool tracking system can supercharge the asset management process. Here’s why you should consider implementing passive UHF RFID for your tool tracking needs:
- Enhanced Inventory Management: When you’re running a construction company, you’ll need to know where equipment and tools are as often as possible. You don’t want assets to be stolen or lost and an RFID tool tracking system helps you to know item locations, when things have been checked in or checked out, etc.
- Increased Efficiency and Productivity: By pulling the trigger on your RFID reader, you can scan assets from your tool inventory quickly and easily. Less manual checking means that your workers can spend less time looking for the tools they need before doing their job. When you combine an RFID tool tracking system with other methods of business management, it creates a whole new level of efficiency for your business.
- Cost Savings: When you know where your tools are at, you won’t have to replace them as often. Theft and loss can be expensive, so this is an excellent benefit. Grey Trunk RFID’s maintenance scheduling/report feature can help to ensure that your assets stick around, resulting in large savings for your organization.
- Improved Accountability: Tracking tools with RFID means that you can keep track of how tools are used. This leads to more responsible tool usage and less unaccounted for disappearances of tools.
- Enhanced Security: It’s tricky for someone to take off or mess with a passive UHF RFID tag without it being noticed. This additional security helps you to rest easy knowing that your pricey or important assets are safe.
- Scalability and Flexibility: When your business grows, and RFID tool tracking system can grow alongside it. Readers and tags can be purchased to fit changing needs, which makes this a good option for organizations of all types.
- Data Accuracy and Accessibility: By using RFID tool tracking, you’ll get a solid idea of where your assets are currently at and their condition. With this information, your employees who track assets will be able to make more well-informed decisions/plans.
Why Choose Passive UHF RFID for Tool Tracking?
For tool tracking, a passive UHF RFID tag is one of the best options that you can choose. Due to their affordability, excellent read range and ability to be scanned in groups, they’re one of the top choices for this application. Batteries are unnecessary for passive tags, so they cost less and are lighter than their active counterparts. This makes them an excellent choice for those who want to track tools.
Cloud-Based System Tool Asset Tracking Using RFID in Construction
A cloud-based system allows you to ditch your spreadsheets and manual tool and equipment inventories. Any action that is taken on an asset, such as adding, editing, or performing inventory scans, is updated in real-time. That means when an employee is in the field and the other is in the office, all information is up to date to keep your team on the same page.
Tag Technology Agnostic
Planning to use barcode or RFID asset tags? Don’t let the construction tool tracking software limit your future growth if you plan to implement RFID in construction at a later time. When searching for software, it is important to find software that is capable of scanning both RFID and barcode. Why? Because if you aren’t ready for RFID in construction quite yet, you can easily transition at a later time without the hassle of switching software.
Customization of Asset Fields
Every business is different, so finding an asset tracking software that provides customization on how to describe and categorize your tools and equipment is important. Asset fields are how you describe your equipment. Using these fields gives you more flexibility in running reports on information that is important to your business. For example, the voltage of a piece of equipment might be very important for a construction company but wouldn’t be important to the IT asset manager who is managing laptops and tablets.
Chain of Custody / Accountability of Tools
Construction equipment, such as a generator, is extremely important to your business and can be very expensive. You can know who is responsible for the asset and when it is due back by using a check-out/check-in system. This helps hold the employees accountable and lowers the chances of lost assets that leave your facility.
Additional Considerations
Before you jump right into RFID tool tracking, there are a couple of key factors that should be discussed. From metals to liquids, there are many things that interfere with the signal of an RFID tag. Finding the right tag and reader for your application is an essential step to make sure your tool tracking system is running smoothly.
Conclusion
As your business continues to grow, start to consider how you are going to keep track of all the tools and equipment that your company will keep purchasing to maintain functioning at high levels. RFID is now becoming a staple in tool and equipment tracking as the best technology to efficiently, accurately, and effectively track and inventory your assets throughout your entire organization.
To start your 30 Day Free Trial, visit www.greytrunkrfid.com to create your account today.
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If you want to see an overview of how an asset management system could work, check out this video.
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 | About the Author: Tyler Johnson Tyler has extensive experience and expertise in the identification industry. Prior to Grey Trunk RFID, he worked at Metalcraft which helped him understand the importance of a high quality identification tag. Now he is leading the team at Grey Trunk RFID to offer the complete solution. |