You know the annual nightmare: the inventory of test and measuring equipment. Employees spend days or weeks searching for hundreds of calipers, torque wrenches, and calibration devices. Lists are manually reconciled, calibration deadlines are laboriously checked, and in the end, equipment is still missing, or expired test equipment is used in production—an enormous risk to your quality.
This manual game of hide-and-seek is not only extremely inefficient, it's also expensive and error-prone. The solution lies in automation. By combining RFID technology with a flexible Low-Code platform, you can track the location and status of all your test equipment in real-time and reduce inventory time from days to just a few minutes.
Wasted Time: Manual searching and inventory tie up highly qualified employees who are prevented from performing value-adding activities during that time.
Quality Risk: If an uncalibrated piece of test equipment is used, entire production batches can be flawed without anyone noticing. The consequences are costly recalls and a damaged reputation.
Loss and Shrinkage: Without seamless tracking, valuable devices are lost or accidentally disposed of.
Lack of Transparency: You never know exactly which test equipment is currently available, which is in use, and which is due for calibration.
Here’s how the automated process that you can implement with your platform works:
Every Test Equipment Item Gets an RFID Tag: A small, robust RFID chip is affixed to every measuring device. This tag contains a globally unique ID.
Strategic Reading Points (RFID Gates): RFID readers are installed at key passages. This could be the entrance to the measuring equipment storage room, the exit to production, or a specific work area.
Automatic Booking: Every time an employee passes through such a "gate" with a piece of test equipment, the device is captured automatically and contactlessly. Your platform now knows the equipment's location in real-time.
Inventory at the Push of a Button: For inventory, an employee walks through the room with a mobile RFID handheld scanner. Within minutes, the device captures all tagged test equipment within a radius of several meters—without line of sight and without having to pick up every single item.
The RFID hardware provides the raw data—your platform makes it intelligent.
Central Test Equipment Database: In your platform, you create a digital twin for every piece of test equipment. Here you store not only the ID but also important master data such as type, manufacturer, purchase date, and, crucially, the next calibration deadline.
Automated Workflows and Alarms:
Calibration Warning: The platform checks deadlines daily. If a calibration is due, a task is automatically created for the responsible employee, and the test equipment is locked in the system.
Issuance Lock: If an employee attempts to remove locked or overdue test equipment from the storage room, the RFID gate can trigger an alarm (e.g., a red light).
Seamless History: Every movement, every use, and every calibration of a piece of test equipment is seamlessly and automatically documented. This is an invaluable advantage for audits (e.g., according to IATF 16949 or ISO 9001).
RFID-based test equipment management is a perfect example of how you can use your Low-Code platform to transform a highly complex, manual process into a lean, automated, and error-free workflow. You not only save hundreds of hours in inventory effort but also elevate your process and quality assurance to a completely new level. You always know where your test equipment is, what condition it is in, and you create audit-proof documentation at the push of a button.