The Benefits of Tracking Your Equipment

When you’re working in construction or building products, there are tons of moving pieces that are involved in getting a project completed efficiently and on time. Because there are so many components and pieces of equipment involved in even the simplest of projects, it is not uncommon to look for a material or a piece of equipment to find that it hasn’t arrived, that it was moved to another job site or a whole host of other reasons. What does all of this mean for you and your company?

Well for starters it means that you’re not going to be able to complete the job in the timeline that’s been set for the project – which is one of the most crucial components to a successful project. It’s going to cost you the time, frustration and mental energy worrying about the missing materials or equipment, as well as the hassle of locating it and getting it sent back to your site. In addition to the personal toll it will take, it will definitely cost your company a large sum, as workers are being paid to hang around at the job site, waiting for the necessary equipment or materials to move forward. It will also potentially cost your company fees or penalties for not completing the checkpoints in your project on time.

So when you think about it, it’s in your best interest to do whatever you can to ensure that you’ve got a system in place that will help you to consistently track the location of materials and equipment and ensure that it will get to the various job sites in a timely manner, so you can meet all of your schedule markers. What’s the best way to go about this? By utilizing a material tracking system, which will allow workers to scan each item when it’s being moved or used, placing the information on a system that you will be able to access from anywhere. This material tracking is often done with a barcode tracking system, which places bar codes on all of the equipment and materials, to ensure everything is being recorded on an automated system.

And while the barcode tracking system will be able to get the job done, it will pale in comparison to an RFID tracking system, which utilizes radio frequencies and harnesses data using a microchip and antenna, which is attached to each piece of equipment. By implementing an RFID tracking system, you’ll be able to store a large volume of data and tracking information about each piece of equipment for each time that it moves, all of which is stored on a main system that you’ll be able to access anywhere – whether it’s at the office or on the job site. Make sure that you’ve got this system in place at every job site you’re on – so you can make sure that crane got to the warehouse, or to the next site. The benefits are great, and by knowing where your materials are, you’ll be able to increase the success of completing superior projects – on time.