What is equipment tracking software and why is it important for your company?

Does your company require equipment tracking?

Managing your inventory can be challenging if your company interacts with hundreds of items. Various pieces of equipment are used by your employees, exchanged between locations and staff, and checked in for maintenance. If you aren’t documenting these processes, your projects will bear the brunt of it.

Moreover, equipment wears faster with excessive use, consequently requiring maintenance and checks. Equipment management takes care of this.

Equipment tracking also encompasses monitoring the total cost of ownership of all items in the company inventory, from large machinery to lab equipment and computers.

Organizations typically require a centralized platform that documents all asset-related activities along with equipment location, owner and contract history.

Equipment tracking for various industries

The U.S industrial machinery and equipment market has expanded over the years to a hefty amount of $257.6 Billion.

To cater to this promising growth, it’s important for equipment-intensive companies to rely on asset management. Other organizations like schools and hospitals may require such a solution for tracking equipment specific to sports or labs.

Based on our experience with prominent industries, we have listed down some of their equipment-related workflows:

1. Healthcare

• Diagnostic equipment like imaging machines, dopplers and pulse oximetry.
• Treatment equipment like infusion pumps and medical lasers.
• Life support equipment like ventilators, dialysis machines, and incubators.

2. Information Technology

• Hardware equipment like laptops, printers, and scanners.
• Portable equipment like smartphones, tablets and wireless devices.

3. Education

• Lab equipment like test tubes, beakers, and microscopes.
• Sports equipment like football, gear, net, and basic fitness machinery.
• HVAC equipment like installation units.

3. Construction and engineering

• Heavy equipment used for tunneling, earth-moving, material handling or transporting.  
• Hand and power tools such as mixers, drills, and clamps. 

Want to learn more about managing construction equipment? Check out our construction equipment infographic!

4. AV and production

• Visual display equipment including LCD screens, projectors, and monitors.
• Recording, production and post-production equipment such as microphones and broadcast processors. 
• Lighting equipment like softbox/ring lights, and LED screens.

Read more: 3 Ways Media Agencies Can Better Organize Events

Why do you need equipment tracking software?

Companies dealing with a large variety of equipment tend to suffer from lapses in managing equipment.

For example, theft is rampant in the construction industry and may result in up to 1 billion dollars in damages every year. In addition to the financial burdens, recovering from machine unavailability disrupts workflows and results in a loss in productivity.

Misplacement of equipment is even greater for industries like AV and Production as they tend to work in remote locations. Similarly for construction companies, securing their domains manually is impractical and costly.

A recommended solution is automating equipment management. In order to do this, many companies opt for equipment tracking software which enables you to streamline business operations.

Here are some ways equipment tracking software can help achieve automation in managing equipment across industries:

1. Enable equipment recovery: Reduce risks related to misplacement and theft by updating current locations in real-time.
2. Run real-time management: Record inventory data and related activities on the cloud. You can also check in equipment upon return or transfer it to a specific location.
3. Track and schedule maintenance: Whether you’re dealing with healthcare diagnostic tools or AV lighting equipment, it’s critical to keep them at optimum conditions. Automate preventive maintenance and reduce unexpected breakdowns.

Read more: Profit Maximization with Equipment Management Software

How to effectively use equipment tracking software

Automation is known to lower inefficiencies for businesses. It boosts equipment productivity and maximizes the return on investment (ROI) for different industries.

Here’s how automation can add value to your equipment management setup:

1. Track the equipment lifecycle: Easily track an item’s lifecycle – from acquisition to disposal. You can keep a tab of critical events like maintenance, depreciation, and replenishment. Having access to real-time data enables you to prevent equipment downtime. You can also simplify depreciation management and sell or dispose of equipment at salvage value.  
2. Manage procurement: Inventory control automates low stock alerts and generates purchase orders for vendors. It enables you to keep healthy relationships with your vendors by documenting your procurement activities.
3. Monitor work order: Having the right type of equipment isn’t enough. It should be well-maintained to function at its best. Tracking maintenance work orders can be automated with a software solution. Create a maintenance request, assign it to the concerning department, and keep it under your watch list.
4. Verify possession of equipment: Equipment theft and misplacement are quite common across the healthcare, education and construction sectors. Lower these instances by requesting check-ins and possession verification.
5. Generate customized barcodes: Maintaining an error-free and comprehensive database that accounts for your entire inventory is important. May it be an infusion pump or small items like USB drives and microphones, stock quantities need to be accurate. Create barcode identifiers for these items and simplify stock counts.

Optimize equipment for productivity with EZOfficeInventory

Managing equipment on your own can be intimidating. Opt for an equipment management solution like EZOfficeInventory that takes the hard work right out of your hands.

Choose between barcodes, QR codes and RFID tags, and create custom labels that best fit your tracking needs.

You can also create and monitor work orders. By using this feature, firms can schedule preventive maintenance sessions to increase up-time. This helps you regulate equipment maintenance to achieve uninterrupted workflows and higher efficiency!

Finally, use the in-depth equipment reports to isolate areas of concern so your operations are never affected.

About EZOfficeInventory

EZOfficeInventory’s equipment tracking solution enables companies to track, maintain and report on equipment from anywhere, at any time.