It is not gone. It just cannot be found.
Tools, molds and measuring equipment circulate between people, departments and sometimes sites. They rarely really disappear. They just sit somewhere nobody expects, and the search costs more than the tool itself.
Note: this is targeted locating, not a dot on a floor plan. The difference is spelled out further down.
Sound familiar?
With tools this is usually the pattern.
- Someone walks around the workshop to see who has a particular piece.
- A tool travels to another department and never comes back from there.
- A second unit was bought because the first went missing too often.
- The loan list is a notebook or a whiteboard that nobody updates.
- There is no way to find out when an inspection or certification expired.
What it costs
What walking around costs
Searches per week
Minutes per search
Weeks
Per year
368 hours
Calculated with euros per hour, and with the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 147 hours6,624 euros per year
- Expected
- 221 hours9,936 euros per year
- Potential
- 294 hours13,248 euros per year
Worked example based onforty searches a week of twelve minutes, across 46 working weeks. The downtime of the work that is waiting is not included here. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
From walking around to targeted search
Two things at once: knowing where something was last seen, and being able to point at it afterwards.
01 / A label that can take the work
Tools are often metal, dirty, and they get knocked over. There are tags that can handle that, with a spacer against the metal. Which one works comes out of a test on your own tools.
02 / Issue in a single action
At the counter or the cabinet it is recorded what goes out and what comes back, without a list and without a signature.
03 / Searching with warmer and colder
You pick the tool in the app and the handheld gives you the direction. Half an hour of walking around becomes walking down one aisle.
The main objection
Common objection
“Can you see exactly where everything is, in real time?”
No. With passive RFID you get the last sighting plus targeted search: you know in which zone something was seen and the handheld takes you there. That is not a live map. Anyone who really wants dots on a floor plan needs active tags with batteries, and that is a different system with many times the cost and the maintenance. We would rather say that now than after you have signed.
What it does and what it does not do
What it does and what it does not do
Wel
- Locating items within a room, with warmer and colder
- Seeing in which zone something was last sighted
- Recording issue and return without anyone writing anything down
- Counting a whole tool cabinet in one round
Niet
- Pointing at an exact position on the floor plan
- Tracking tools that left the building, without reading points out there
- Guaranteeing without a test that small metal and keys read reliably
- Reporting that something was just taken, where there is no reading point
This is the expectation that most often needs correcting. Passive RFID does not give you a real-time map with dots. It gives you a last sighting plus a handheld that walks you to the item. For almost every search in a workshop that is enough, and it costs a fraction of a system that does give you dots.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
One category of tools, one workshop. We measure how much time searching costs now and what share of the items reads reliably.
Scope
- One category of tools
- One workshop or department
- Temporary labels, chosen per material
- Search time and find rate before and after
- Items that do not read reliably are named separately
Go or no-go
If part of the tools does not read reliably, the small metal work for example, that goes in the report. You decide on the basis of what was measured, not on what we hope for.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work on metal tools?
Not with an ordinary label, but it does with a metal tag. That one has a spacer and a shorter read range, and it costs more. On very small tools it varies per item, so only a test settles it there.
How do you attach a tag to a tool?
Depending on the item: glue, screws, a cable tie or a heat shrink sleeve. It has to survive the use, so we choose that per type of tool during the Proof of Value.
Can we also see who took something?
Yes, if the issue point has a read moment. At a cabinet or counter that people walk past, the combination of person and item is recorded. Without such a moment you only know where the item was last seen.
And inspections and maintenance?
Every item has a unique number, so you can hang an inspection or maintenance date on it. During a counting round you then see straight away which items are past their date.