Tracking Crane equipments at construction sites
Submitted by jeffrey on Thu, 2007-04-12 05:59.
Tags: Construction site | Cranes | Equipments
The United States subsidiary of Dublin, Ireland based Stafford Cranes is a leading player in providing construction equipment. It has more then 40 years of combined experience in tower crane, rental, service and maintenance. It provides complete erection and dismantling of tower cranes, its maintenance, sales and also provides crane operators across the United States.
As a part of its business operations, the company has to often transfer equipments from one construction site to another. Tall tower cranes are assembled using hundreds of small parts and many types of equipment. This requires efficient tracking of these expensive parts and equipments which can easily get lost at the construction site. Company often faced problems in doing this. Inaccurate information, delay in getting information resulted in equipment either lying unutilized or not reaching the desired destination on time. Also, the company would now know when particular equipment was picked up from one site and when it reached the other site.
After due deliberations, company decided to try RFID technology to help it increase its crane equipment utilization. It recently announced successful completion of the first phase of the RFID deployment project. This phase used a combination of active, semi active and passive RFID tags. AssetPulse was chosen as System Integrator for the project. RF-Code supplied the tags. The system was managed by AssetGather software customized as per Stafford Cranes processes.
The biggest challenge was the wide open area of a construction site which had many metallic barriers like construction equipments themselves. Hence, careful study of a typical construction site was required to choose the appropriate RFID tag and RFID readers.
The benefits of the new systems are self-evident. Equipments can now be tracked in an easier way. The number of lost equipments is going down gradually. Also the audits provide valuable information like which equipments are often misplaced and who are the employees who often misplace equipments. All these saves company valuable money and improved efficiency. Even the overall pace of construction is expected to rise due to removal of this important bottleneck.
Technorati Tags: Construction site# Cranes# Equipments# #
Tags: Construction site | Cranes | Equipments
Introduction
The United States subsidiary of Dublin, Ireland based Stafford Cranes is a leading player in providing construction equipment. It has more then 40 years of combined experience in tower crane, rental, service and maintenance. It provides complete erection and dismantling of tower cranes, its maintenance, sales and also provides crane operators across the United States.
The need for RFID
As a part of its business operations, the company has to often transfer equipments from one construction site to another. Tall tower cranes are assembled using hundreds of small parts and many types of equipment. This requires efficient tracking of these expensive parts and equipments which can easily get lost at the construction site. Company often faced problems in doing this. Inaccurate information, delay in getting information resulted in equipment either lying unutilized or not reaching the desired destination on time. Also, the company would now know when particular equipment was picked up from one site and when it reached the other site.
The solution
After due deliberations, company decided to try RFID technology to help it increase its crane equipment utilization. It recently announced successful completion of the first phase of the RFID deployment project. This phase used a combination of active, semi active and passive RFID tags. AssetPulse was chosen as System Integrator for the project. RF-Code supplied the tags. The system was managed by AssetGather software customized as per Stafford Cranes processes.
The challenges
The biggest challenge was the wide open area of a construction site which had many metallic barriers like construction equipments themselves. Hence, careful study of a typical construction site was required to choose the appropriate RFID tag and RFID readers.
Benefits
The benefits of the new systems are self-evident. Equipments can now be tracked in an easier way. The number of lost equipments is going down gradually. Also the audits provide valuable information like which equipments are often misplaced and who are the employees who often misplace equipments. All these saves company valuable money and improved efficiency. Even the overall pace of construction is expected to rise due to removal of this important bottleneck.
Stafford Cranes management is impressed with the implementation and is looking forward to leverage the technology in more areas of their business.
Technorati Tags: Construction site# Cranes# Equipments# #» login to post comments