Searching is in nobody's job description. It happens all day anyway.
Someone who needs an item walks to the place where it belongs first. Then to the place where it usually is. Then they call a colleague. A few minutes every time, and those minutes are recorded nowhere.
Run the numbers first. If the sum is too thin, that is the end of it.
Sound familiar?
Time spent searching is hard to see because it never sits in one block. This is what it looks like in practice.
- A work order waits because the material is not in its assigned spot.
- Someone walks back and forth three times before the right pallet turns up.
- People call or message to ask who has a particular piece of equipment.
- A spare unit is kept ready because searching takes too long.
- New hires are months slower because they do not know the spots yet.
What it costs
How it adds up
Employees
Minutes searching per day
Working days
Per year
613 hours
Calculated with euros per hour, and with the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 245 hours11,040 euros per year
- Expected
- 368 hours16,560 euros per year
- Potential
- 491 hours22,080 euros per year
Worked example based ontwenty employees searching an average of eight minutes a day, across 230 working days. That is less than most people estimate and it still runs up to more than half a person-year. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
What you do instead
Searching does not disappear because you make better rules about putting things back. It disappears when the item itself can be found.
01 / The item gets a label
A tag with a unique number. Which type that becomes depends on the material and the surroundings, and we decide that on the basis of your own items.
02 / Read moments inside the work you already do
At issue, at a doorway, or during a round with the handheld. No extra action, but a recorded last sighting.
03 / Targeted search instead of walking around
You pick the item in the app and the handheld tells you whether you are getting warmer or colder. Half an hour of searching becomes walking down one aisle.
The main objection
Common objection
“Will this pay off enough for us?”
You only know once you run the numbers, and you can do that without us. Twenty people searching eight minutes a day come out at more than six hundred hours a year. Five people in an orderly workshop come out somewhere else entirely. If the sum is too thin, we would rather say so now than after a quote.
What it does and what it does not do
What it does and what it does not do
Wel
- Locating items within a room or zone, with warmer and colder
- The last sighting: where the item was and when
- Registering several items at once during a round
- Showing which spots structurally create search work
Niet
- An exact position on the floor plan, that takes a different system
- Finding items that are outside the range of your reading points
- Guaranteeing without a test that small metal and keys read well
- Finding something that was never labeled
Locating an item is not the same as tracking it in real time. You do not get a dot on a map, you get a direction and a last sighting. For almost every search on a shop floor that is enough.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
A small, paid test on one group of items. First measure how long searching takes now, then how long it takes with RFID.
Scope
- One item group and one location
- Temporary labels, no permanent installation
- Baseline measurement of the current search time
- Searching with a handheld by a limited group
Go or no-go
After the test the two measurements sit side by side. If too little search time came off, that is the outcome and it stops with no further obligation.
Frequently asked questions
How do you actually measure time spent searching?
During the baseline measurement we have a limited group of people track, over a short period, how often they go looking for something and how long that takes. That is not scientific research, but it does produce a number that comes from your own floor instead of from a brochure.
Does this work outside or in a cold store?
Usually it does, but not with every label. Moisture, frost and direct sunlight decide which type of tag you need and how it is attached. That is a choice we make and test in the Proof of Value.
Do all items have to be labeled at once?
No. You start with the group that causes the most search work. That is almost never the whole inventory, and it is not meant to become that either.
How long does a Proof of Value take?
That is agreed per assignment, because it depends on what we measure and on the group you start with. Most of the time goes into recording the starting point properly.