Searching becomes targeted. Instead of walking around and calling people.
Searching is in nobody's job description, so it is never recorded anywhere. It still goes on all day: first to the spot where it belongs, then to the spot where it usually sits, then a phone call. A few minutes each time, with everyone, every day.
We measure first what searching costs you today. Without that number, any result afterwards is an opinion.
Sound familiar?
Time spent searching is hard to see because it never sits in one block. This is what it looks like in practice.
- Someone walks back and forth three times before finding the right one.
- People call or message to ask who had it last.
- A spare is kept ready because searching takes too long.
- A work order waits because the material is not in the spot listed.
- New staff are slower for months because they do not know the spots.
What it costs
What searching costs per year
Employees
Minutes per day
Working days
Per year
958 hours
Calculated with euros per hour, and with the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 383 hours17,250 euros per year
- Expected
- 575 hours25,875 euros per year
- Potential
- 767 hours34,500 euros per year
Worked example based ontwenty-five people who spend ten minutes a day searching on average, across 230 working days. That is one minute in every fifty of a working day. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
How targeted search works
Two things at once: knowing which corner to be in, and then being able to point it out within that corner.
01 / A unique number per item
A tag with its own number, chosen for the material. There are separate labels for tools and small metal items; which one works comes out of a test and not out of a brochure.
02 / The last sighting as a starting point
At issue, at a doorway or during a round with the handheld, where something was seen gets recorded. That tells you which zone to start in instead of the whole building.
03 / Warmer and colder
In the app you pick the item and the handheld shows signal strength and direction. A half-hour hunt becomes walking one aisle with the screen in your hand.
What locating items with RFID does and does not do
What locating items with RFID does and does not do
Wel
- Targeted search inside a room or zone, with warmer and colder
- Zone recognition: which part of the building this was last seen in
- Show the last sighting: where, when, at which action
- Register issue and return in one action, without a list or a signature
Niet
- A real-time position on a floor plan, the way a system with battery tags does
- Track items that have left the building, unless there are reading points there too
- Guarantee without a test that a set of keys or small metal tools read well
- Report that something is gone when the process holds no reading moment
This is the most important expectation to set straight up front. RFID is not a map with moving dots. It is a last sighting plus a targeted search, and for the vast majority of searches that is exactly enough. If you really need dots on a floor plan, you need a different and considerably more expensive system, and we would rather say that now than afterwards.
What changes in practice
From walking around to warmer and colder
You pick the item and walk toward it. The handheld gets warmer, and that works in full racking too.Five minutes instead of an hour
The search is done before anyone else gets pulled in. That saves two people standing around waiting.The last sighting
Where it was, when, at which action. Often that alone is enough to find it without searching.No buying it twice
What you find back you do not have to replace. With expensive equipment that is where the money sits.
What this looks like in your operation
The same solution lands differently on a production floor than in a warehouse. Pick your own situation and you will see what changes for you, and what a Proof of Value measures there.
Assets & equipment
Find tools, equipment and carriers faster and lose fewer of them. Measure your time spent searching and prove it on one asset category.
Manufacturing & material flow
Less searching for material, less manual posting and stock that adds up. Start with a small, paid Proof of Value on one material flow.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
One item group, one location, a limited group of users. We measure time spent searching and find rate before and after.
Scope
- One item group or asset category
- One location or department
- Temporary labels, chosen per material
- Searching with a handheld by a limited group of users
- Time spent searching and find rate before and after, plus the exceptions
Go or no-go
After the test period you know how much searching time actually came off and which share of the items reads reliably. If part of it turns out not to work, the small metal tools for example, that goes in the report and you decide on that basis.
What you are probably thinking
Can you see in real time where everything is?
No, and anyone promising that with passive RFID is not telling the whole story. What you get is the last sighting plus a targeted search: you know which zone something was seen in and the handheld takes you there. If you really want dots on a floor plan, you need active tags with batteries, and that is a different project at a different price.
Our tools are metal, does that work?
Not with an ordinary label. There are tags made specifically for metal, with a spacer in between. They work, but the read range is shorter and the price higher. With small tools and keys the outcome differs per item, so there we simply test it.
Nothing goes missing here, it is just not in its place.
Exactly, and that is what this is about. Loss is rarely the cost; searching is. Run it through the calculator: with twenty-five people searching ten minutes a day it adds up to almost a thousand hours a year, without anything ever really disappearing.