Feb 26, 2018Florida-based Linder Industrial Machinery has increased its efficiency with an active RFID-based system from GuardRFID that tracks the movement of its high-value, industrial equipment as it enters and leaves its storage yards. The company also can employ the RFID-based data to better manage the servicing of equipment as it is cleaned or maintained. Since the system was taken live at nine of its 19 locations, the company says it has been able to not only reduce its manual inventory tracking efforts, but also ensure that its high-value assets are never lost.
The AllGuard Yard Management solution was taken live in August 2017. Since then, the company reports, Linder Industrial Machinery has been better able to manage equipment leaving or returning to its yard, as well as move that equipment from one site to another. The system also enables it to track which customer has each particular item, and for how long.
Linder Industrial Machinery, founded in 1953, rents and sells equipment for use in residential and commercial applications, as well as highway construction, says Eric D. Strid, the firm's IT director. Its customers are located in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Its branch locations, which span the U.S. Southeast, store and maintain such equipment as milling machines, pavers, crushing and compacting products, demolition systems and scrap attachments for future use.
Managing inventory is an extensive and challenging task, the company reports, that was previously performed manually. Some of the equipment can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and flows in and out of the storage yards in sufficiently high volume that, in some cases, a piece may end up missing. Often, Strid says, six of seven trucks might be lined up at a storage yard to receive or deliver a specific piece of equipment, especially at the end of the month. As a result, items may occasionally be missed. The company, in fact, had to write off $70,000 worth of equipment annually, on average, which was sometimes redundant.
For instance, an accessory or piece of equipment may be received but not be formally checked into the system, meaning it might be onsite and available for rental to other customers, but the system would still not have a record of its return. Potentially more serious are instances when a piece of equipment leaves the storage yard and the company doesn't know where it is.
The GuardRFID system consists of active RFID tags, with a tag attached to each item. The equipment company, thus far, has purchased a total of approximately 1,800 tags for use on the nine sites. GuardRFID 433 MHz Solar Powered Tag Readers (SPTRs) are installed around the yard, with six such units, on average, deployed per site. There are also four Solar Powered Tag Exciters (SPTEs) at the gates to activate the tags via a 125 KHz transmission; the tags then beacon their own ID number, along with that of the exciter, to nearby readers. The response to the SPTE then indicates when a tagged piece of equipment has reached the gate and in what direction it is going (there is an exciter on each side of the gate for inbound and outbound transportation).
The SPTRs transmit data to GuardRFID's cloud-based software via a Wi-Fi connection. GuardRFID software, which receives inventory data from Linder Industrial Machinery's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, captures each tag read and links that tag ID with information about that, item including where it is going or has come from, and then stores that data. The system also can issue alerts.
First, a yard worker receives a transfer order for a rental, or a sales order. He or she then uses the GuardRFID software to confirm that the requested item is onsite. The RFID reader data displays the tag's location on a map of the yard. Once it is loaded and transported out through the gate, the item's status is updated as having left the premises on its way to a customer. When it returns, the system works similarly. The exciters at the gate again awaken the tags, after which the software updates each tag ID's status as having been received.
The process also works when equipment is transported from one of Linder's RFID-enabled yards to another, to ensure that the item is closer to a customer who will be picking it up. In this way, the company knows at which of the nine RFID-enabled storage yards a piece of equipment is located.
While the system's primary function is to identify the arrivals and departures of equipment, it is also capable of managing tagged items while they are onsite, for the purpose of providing real-time data and analytics. "One of the things that's been most important," Strid states, "is that we've been able to have metrics around when equipment and attachments enter and leave the yard."
The system reduces the amount of time workers spend searching for attachments or other equipment in the yard, and it also provides historic data that also enables analytics regarding productivity and how quickly equipment is maintained and ready for rental. "We have wanted to track how long it takes to flip a piece of equipment around," Strid reports, "from the point when a work order is opened for cleaning until it is back on the line."
The system has already prevented at least one costly error since its installation, Strid says. A company was in the process of removing the wrong piece of equipment from the yard, he explains, but the software detected that action and alerted individuals onsite before the driver could leave. In the future, the firm intends to work with some of the equipment manufacturers to set up a system by which they would attach RFID tags themselves before selling the equipment to Linder Industrial Machinery.
The installation posed a few challenges for Linder Industrial Machinery and GuardRFID, Strid says—the first and foremost being the environment. The large amount of metal meant tag reads could be obstructed from some angles. The company determined the best location and orientation for each tag on the equipment, so as to ensure a reliable read. The construction environment also served as a challenge, since tags are exposed to hard knocks, mud, chemicals and, in some cases, travel (for ma drill or other piece of equipment used underground). To address this issue, Linder Industrial Machinery installed a steel ring around each tag to protect it when the equipment is in use.
