Equipment Management Systems Automate Time-Consuming Work

The labor savings generated by switching to automated equipment tracking quickly add up, from a few hours a week snowballing into hundreds of hours of saved labor annually. You’ll eliminate time-consuming transaction logging, tracking late returns, managing reservations, and hunting down who signed out which equipment last. Electronically-managed transactions take seconds. 

And switching also eliminates costly and time-consuming human errors. Smart lockers don’t get distracted, try to work while sick, or get tired at the end of their shift. Every detail you care about is logged right the first time.  

RFID tags and smart terminals capture far more data, and in greater detail, than human inventory managers ever could hope to collect by hand. So from the moment you add a piece of equipment to your inventory to the day you retire it, you’ll always know who used it, where it is, and if there are any problems with it. We call this ‘cradle to the grave’ tracking. 

Data from RFID sensors and the access terminals collect in the central dashboard. There, you can run pore over everything in detail or look at high-level reports that summarize broad trends in equipment utilization. In addition, many users can identify usage patterns they wouldn’t otherwise notice, such as fault patterns or losses reported more frequently at certain times of the day. 

You can then use that data to inform your decision-making. For example, seeing those previously-unknown fault patterns might lead you to adjust equipment maintenance schedules. Or use the equipment management system to alert technicians when devices are due for servicing and prevent regular users from signing them out. 

Error-free recordkeeping means you always know who is using which items. So if something is overdue for return or missing at the end of a shift, you know exactly who to speak to first. By setting curfews, the equipment management system can also alert you if anything is overdue for return. So you can immediately search for equipment before it gets lost in the shuffle. 

And, of course, they still reduce losses. The costs saved here often pale compared to streamlining business operations, but if you can avoid buying replacement handheld scanners, tablets, laptops, toolkits, or other expensive equipment, you’ll want to. 

From the management dashboard, you can configure signout curfews on different pieces of equipment. Then, if an employee doesn’t return the equipment on time, your asset manager or supervisor receives an email alert prompting them to investigate. Whether it is an accident or malicious, immediately searching for missing equipment greatly increases the chance it will be found and returned. 

Don’t wait for your vital equipment to fail before servicing it. The best way to maintain optimal business performance is to monitor equipment for faults and stick to a reliable preventative maintenance schedule and reduce equipment downtime. 

Use the checklist capabilities of your equipment management system to require users to conduct pre- and post-use equipment inspections for potential problems. For example, they can log software fault codes, mechanical problems, or cracked screens.  

If someone ever reports a critical error, the equipment management system can lock the device out of circulation, preventing new users from unlocking that compartment. You can use the same alert system that notifies supervisors of an overdue return and can notify technicians that a device is ready to be picked up for servicing. They enter an override code to remove it from the locker, resolve the problem, and return it to circulation without an equipment manager needing to facilitate the process.