Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is becoming more common in the construction industry. The technology offers contractors and machine operators an easy way to track and maintain assets.
One example comes from Linder Industrial Machinery. The company sells off-road equipment for residential and commercial construction, highway construction, paving, aggregates and mining, and more.
The company recently began using GuardRFID’s AllGuard Solution. This provides the machinery company with inventory visibility and allows tracking and location of high value assets to enhance productivity and accuracy. The technology also reports when equipment leaves or returns to a yard and provides continuous monitoring of equipment to prevent loss and theft.
How RFID Technology Works
Here’s how the technology works: Active RFID tags are placed on equipment and monitored using both a long-range, real-time location system and a close-range portal detection within a single system. It can be used to provide a real-time view of inventory across multiple yard sites.
For Linder Industrial Machinery, outdoor and remote locations creates challenges for inventory tracking and security. The use of RFID helps to solve this challenge by providing an easy way to track assets and manage inventory.
Prior to implementing the solution, it was writing off $70,000 in equipment per year, and then purchasing additional equipment to rent while the required items were already on site, having been returned, but not known to them. This can now be eliminated.
In fact, due to the technology, Linder was recently able to prevent an $180,000 bulldozer from leaving the yard without authorization or the right paperwork. RFID provides a number of benefits to the construction industry and this is one recent example.
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