Many companies in various industries rely on their equipment to drive their production. Regardless of the equipment and how it is used, there is a common need for a professional and efficient production tool management system.
RFID asset management systems can potentially be used to track any piece of equipment involved in a business process. Because RFID asset tracking solutions require little or no human intervention, they enable greater asset visibility and therefore offer a large potential for improving asset management and cutting operating costs.
In the Transportation and Logistics sector, an intelligent haulage and handling vehicle management system is vital to ensure that operations are carried out efficiently and effectively, according to safety and maintenance requirements and cost control specifications. RFID readers and tags, installed in buildings and in vehicles, allow you to track and locate vehicles, monitor their use, determine their availability, etc. In short, they enable real-time visibility of all your equipment.
Neopost ID has developed the idMHE solution to meet the visibility requirements of logisticians.
The real-time location of material-handling equipment in warehouses
idMHE uses RFID technology to track forklifts and other material handling vehicles in real time; it offers extensive visibility of the use of your equipment, enabling you to optimize your fleet and hence reduce your overall operating costs.
The real-time location of warehouse equipment gives a new dimension to logistics operations, especially in large and medium-sized warehouses. The automatic detection of loading/unloading activities facilitates the allocation of platforms. The tracking function helps you to quickly find the most suitable equipment for a given handling operation. It also detects trucks that have been left in an alley, due to either negligence or breakdown.
A solution that enables you to better define the size of your fleet
The idMHE tracking system also allows you to monitor the activity of your equipment. It detects when a truck moves or is started up, and accurately calculates the operating time of each piece of equipment. Hence you can identify over and under-used assets, with the short-term goal of optimizing their use and the medium-term goal of appropriately sizing your fleet. In a multi-site set-up, under-used equipment can be transferred from one logistics site to another to fulfill a specific need.
In addition to its asset tracking function, idMHE comes with a battery monitoring system. A specific RFID tag is placed on each battery to monitor its status in real time. To even out the use of batteries, the charging cycles are also monitored. Hence, when batteries are being changed in the charging room, your operators can select the most fully charged battery and maintain a steady rotation. Your batteries will last longer and you will save money, thanks to more efficient fleet management and a more balanced overall use of your equipment.
A maintenance management module
idMHE integrates a maintenance module registering preventive and corrective maintenance operations. Each scheduled maintenance operation can be recorded to facilitate planning and the work of maintenance technicians. Breakdowns are also recorded, enabling you to track incidents occurring in the fleet, calculate equipment downtime, identify those that break down repeatedly and are therefore detrimental to productivity, and even identify the odd careless user.
A bundled solution, based on a service contract
idMHE is a bundled ‘Managed Services’ solution including all the project components:
- RFID equipment: readers, location tags, battery tags, radio hubs, etc.
- The idMHE software for locating and managing the handling equipment fleet
- On-site implementation and maintenance services
- And even computer hardware if required: server, PC, accessories
This service-oriented approach provides an up-to-date solution in a very short timeframe, without investment. It also means that you will not need your own technical resources to implement your solution. Finally, it is the perfect way of keeping costs in line with the size of your fleet.
In order to determine the overall project requirements, define methods of optimization and estimate your return on investment, we will run a complete analysis of your environment. This includes understanding your processes, running site audits to capture the project’s physical environment, studying your entire vehicle fleet to select the most adapted RFID solution - and adjust it when necessary, analyzing the data flows to be managed for a tailored solution, and determining your exact functional requirements so you can fully benefit from the collected RFID data.