Asset tracking is the process of monitoring, managing, and providing maintenance for your organization’s physical assets such as manufacturing equipment, warehouse machinery, vehicles, facilities, and infrastructure, as well as the spare parts, tools, raw materials and other resources you utilize to maintain these critical assets.

Asset tracking is a vital part of protecting your assets against loss, damage, theft, or failure. As we’ll discuss in the guide that follows, asset tracking is particularly important in asset-intensive industries like healthcare, manufacturing, construction, and oil & gas. In these contexts, organizations have not only invested a great deal of capital into their equipment, but operational continuity also depends on the functionality and availability of these assets.

A quick overview of asset tracking

The following guide will discuss the important role that asset tracking plays in each of the above-mentioned industries. But first, let’s take a close look at exactly what asset tracking is and how it works.

How asset tracking works

Today, most asset tracking strategies are tech-enabled. Organizations in asset-intensive industries rely on real-time location systems that utilize barcodes, QR codes, GPS, and RFID tags to collect real-time data on the location, status, and condition of these assets.

These digital solutions are often folded into broader asset management or maintenance management platforms. For instance, a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) will typically integrate an advanced real-time asset tracking application with a host of other asset management applications including features for managing inventory, preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling, work order creation, and more.

This is because asset tracking strategies are most valuable and effective when working in coordination with other essential asset management processes. On its own, asset tracking gives organizations the ability to locate and assess the condition of assets in real time while also keeping detailed records, data, and maintenance history on a given piece of equipment.

Combined with other programs and strategies, asset tracking can play a central role in improving maintenance outcomes, reducing unplanned downtime, and lengthening the expected useful lifespan of your critical assets.

The role of asset tracking in asset management strategies

Asset tracking is about much more than keepings tabs on the location of your assets. The visibility provided by effective asset tracking also allows you to monitor individual asset features like:

Utilization
Performance
Condition
Maintenance History
Open Work Orders
Warranty Status
Depreciation

To this extent, asset tracking is vital to your maintenance program. A comprehensive and effective asset tracking strategy can provide your maintenance team with the data to make informed decisions about routine maintenance, parts replacements, asset discharge, and more.

Moreover, centralized asset information makes it easier for organizations to manage inventories, optimize usage, and reduce unnecessary expenses tied to overstocking, spoilage, asset loss or underutilization.

Now that we have a general understanding of asset tracking and why it’s so important to the success of your maintenance team, let’s drill down the role that asset tracking processes play in a few key asset-intensive industries.

Asset tracking in healthcare

Asset tracking is absolutely vital to the healthcare industry, where the availability, functionality, and safety of essential medical equipment, medical devices, and supplies can have a profound impact on health outcomes for patients. In the section below, we’ll take a closer look at the vital role of asset tracking in the healthcare industry.

Understanding asset management in healthcare

Healthcare providers must establish comprehensive asset management processes in order to ensure quality care, maintain regulatory compliance, and prolong the lifespan of often costly critical asset including:

Medical equipment such diagnostic machines (e.g., MRI, CT scanners), surgical tools, ventilators, and patient monitors;
Consumables such as surgical instruments, syringes, medications, and masks;
Facilities and infrastructure such as HVAC systems, elevators, and sterilization units; and
IT tools including computer terminals, mobile devices, and telecommunication systems.

The ability of healthcare facilities to provide adequate, safe, effective and responsive patient care depends on the accessibility and condition of these assets.

Tracking processes contribute directly to other vital dimensions of healthcare asset management. In addition to tracking the location, condition, and usage of these assets, healthcare asset tracking will typically also include processes for ensuring assets are:

Maintained
Inspected
Sanitized
Available as needed
Replaced as needed

As in many other asset-intensive industries, healthcare providers typically rely on item tagging with barcodes, QR codes, or RFID chips in order to monitor asset health and schedule necessary repairs or upgrades.

Why is asset tracking in healthcare important?

Healthcare asset tracking ensures operational efficiency, patient safety, and compliance with often strict regulatory conditions by supporting the important work of facilities managers, asset managers, and maintenance technicians.

Asset tracking is a particularly important component of a proactive maintenance strategy. Healthcare organizations that rely on reactive maintenance strategies run a variety of risks including more frequent equipment breakdowns, increased downtime, costly emergency repairs, disrupted patient care, delayed treatments, and heightened patient safety risks.

In contrast, the benefits of an effective asset tracking program include:

Enhanced efficiency, with digital location tracking preventing loss, reducing the time spent searching for assets,and improving the speed with which assets can be leveraged to provide timely patient care.
Reduced downtime, with real-time tracking data helping to inform preventive maintenance scheduling and consequently helping to prevent breakdowns, failures, and prolonged repair times.
Cost savings, with more optimal asset utilization helping to improve energy efficiency, extend equipment lifespan, and reduce the need for costly repairs.
Regulatory compliance, with more accurate equipment tracking producing comprehensive audit trails, and ensuring compliance with important healthcare regulations.

Asset tracking challenges in healthcare

Maintenance and facilities managers who are responsible for healthcare asset tracking may face a variety of hurdles that are specific to the healthcare sector.

For instance, maintenance and facilities managers must:

Ensure availability of critical life-saving equipment with the help of real-time asset tracking.
Function in high-volume settings such as hospitals and health networks, which must frequently manage thousands of assets spread across multiple departments and geographical locations.
Comply with strict regulatory standards, often requiring detailed records on equipment condition, performance, and maintenance.

What do healthcare companies need from asset tracking solutions?

Healthcare companies that are seeking to implement, improve or upgrade asset tracking systems should look for asset management tools that offer certain key features. For instance, leading CMMS solutions include:

Real-time asset tracking, allowing you to view the current status, location, and usage history of medical assets.
Preventive maintenance (PM) planning, with automated PM scheduling based on condition monitoring, usage data or pre-set intervals.
Regulatory compliance support, with built-in checklists, reporting features, and documentation for your audit trail.
Cloud-based mobile access, allowing maintenance teams to check asset location, status and condition, as well as log updates, from anywhere in your health network.
Integration capabilities with other healthcare systems, such as electronic medical records (EMR).

How do CMMS platforms transform asset tracking in healthcare?

Implementing a CMMS can streamline, simplify, and enhance your healthcare asset tracking strategy by automating a number of asset management processes and offering real-time data on asset status.

Platforms like Limble CMMS also provide centralized, user-friendly, and customizable dashboards where healthcare providers can monitor the health of their assets, leverage data to plan preemptive equipment repairs, and ensure compliance with stringent healthcare industry regulations.

See why Spectrum Solutions trusts Limble

Medical device manufacturer Spectrum Solutions chose Limble to help them simplify compliance with strict FDA regulations and smooth the transition to more preventive maintenance. Check out their story.

Asset tracking in manufacturing

The manufacturing industry depends entirely on the availability, functionality, and efficiency of physical assets for operational continuity. Asset tracking is, therefore, absolutely vital to the viability of any manufacturing business.

Manufacturing businesses rely on a highly coordinated system of interdependent assets including heavy industrial equipment, transport vehicles, essential spare parts, assembly tools, and more. Maintenance teams often use advanced asset tracking strategies to monitor, maintain, and inspect these interlocking parts.

Understanding asset management in manufacturing

Asset management offers a framework for any manufacturing organization’s approach to procurement, usage, tracking, and maintaining physical assets.

Asset managers, facilities managers, and maintenance personnel are collectively responsible for ensuring availability, efficiency and functionality of:

Production equipment such as assembly line machinery, CNC machines, presses, and robotic systems
Inventory such as tools, raw materials, spare parts, and finished products
Vehicles such as forklifts, trucks, and conveyor systems
Facilities and infrastructure such as HVAC systems, boilers, and plant equipment
Safety systems such as fire suppression systems, security systems, and emergency exits

Why is asset tracking in manufacturing important?

Asset tracking is especially important in the manufacturing industry, where your production schedule, quality control, and output depend on the functionality and reliability of your production equipment.

This importance is magnified by the challenges that manufacturers face when relying on predominantly reactive maintenance strategies. Manufacturers that fail to track, monitor and maintain assets proactively often face increasingly costly system failures.

Frequent equipment breakdowns contribute to prolonged downtime, costly emergency repairs and work stoppages. This, in turn, can lead to delivery delays, lost revenue, and damaged brand reputation. And ultimately, this approach intensifies the daily wear and tear on your critical equipment, which can shorten the operational lifespan of costly assets.

In contrast, organizations with effective manufacturing asset tracking systems have the opportunity to:

Maximize equipment efficiency by tracking machinery performance, anticipating maintenance needs, preventing breakdowns, and reducing unplanned downtime.
Monitor inventory levels in real time, maintain optimal stock levels, and trigger automated reordering of low stock in order to prevent production delays.
Improve workflow by ensuring that critical tools and equipment are available in the right locations and maintained properly, minimizing risks of asset loss, accidents or breakdowns.
Lower maintenance costs by optimizing equipment utilization and reducing the need for frequent and costly replacements and repairs.
Support regulatory compliance requirements, including documentation of equipment maintenance and safety checks.

Asset tracking challenges in manufacturing

The manufacturing industry presents a number of unique asset tracking challenges. For example, asset management and maintenance teams are typically responsible for:

Tracking a wide variety of assets across large-scale operations, often with facilities and infrastructure housed in more than one location.
Managing complex maintenance requirements, including the coordination of maintenance and inspection schedules.
Preventing and minimizing the impact of unplanned downtime, which can have severe and compounding financial consequences in the manufacturing industry.

What do manufacturing companies need from asset tracking solutions?

Manufacturing companies require asset tracking solutions that are reliable, scalable, data-driven, and tailored to their specific operational needs. Many manufacturing firms employ CMMS systems to both handle asset tracking needs, and to integrate tracking with a number of other advanced asset management and maintenance management features.

For instance, key manufacturing asset tracking features may include:

Real-time monitoring of asset location, usage, and condition
Automated preventive maintenance scheduling based on usage data or pre-defined time intervals
Inventory tracking, ensuring critical spare parts are always available and readily located for maintenance tasks, as well as preventing production delays due to stockouts
Predictive maintenance tools, including advanced data analytics for forecasting potential equipment failures and recommending maintenance action before breakdowns can occur
Integration with popular manufacturing software solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

How do CMMS platforms transform asset tracking in manufacturing?

CMMS platforms can play a transformative role in how manufacturers manage and track assets.

Automates preventive maintenance scheduling, ensuring that machinery is serviced regularly and reducing the chances of unexpected breakdowns
Monitors asset usage patterns to identify underutilized equipment and optimize production workflows
Extends equipment lifespan, lowers repair costs, and delays expensive equipment replacements through proactive maintenance
Uses real-time tracking to ensure that production and maintenance teams always know the status and location of critical assets,
Supports regulatory compliance by providing checklists, generating detailed maintenance reports, and compiling comprehensive audit trails

Learn how Liberty Safe transformed maintenance

The nation’s largest manufacturers of home and gun safes surveyed a crowded CMMS marketplace and selected Limble to support a maintenance transformation. So far they’ve cut downtime on critical assets by more than 75%. Read the full case study.

Asset tracking in construction

Construction businesses have the challenging responsibility of managing large, costly critical assets across a wide range of facilities and job sites. Moreover, the work of construction engineers, builders, and teams depends on the availability and maximum functionality of various assets.

Due to the industry’s unique set of hazards and safety concerns, the use and maintenance of construction assets is governed by a number of important regulatory conditions, safety standards, and industry best practices.

Construction assets typically include:

Heavy equipment such as excavators, bulldozers, cranes, and forklifts
Small equipment such as power tools, generators, and handheld devices
Building materials such as cement, steel, and lumber
Transport vehicles including trucks and trailers

Why is asset tracking in construction important?

Construction businesses depend on the availability, safety and reliability of these assets for everything from transporting materials and managing supply warehouses to building and demolition.

Asset tracking software gives construction teams the ability to monitor the location, condition, and usage of these assets in real time. This approach provides construction asset managers with the data and insight to make proactive decisions about equipment utilization and maintenance.

Construction organizations that take a solely reactive approach to asset maintenance are likely to face a multitude of issues and setbacks including unexpected construction equipment breakdowns, costly project delays, and expensive emergency repairs. In particular, when construction equipment fails on-site, the added pressure to complete emergency repairs can drive up costs such as expedited shipping fees for spare parts and overtime pay.

In contrast, organizations with effective construction asset tracking systems have the opportunity to:

Control costs by ensuring assets are being used efficiently, minimizing energy waste and delaying the need for asset replacement.
Manage project timelines by ensuring the right construction equipment is available and easily located as needed.
Improve loss prevention by monitoring assets in real-time, restricting unauthorized usage, and quickly detecting missing items.
Maximizing equipment utilization by ensuring all assets are being used to their fullest potential, preventing an excess of idle machinery, and optimizing resource allocation across multiple worksites.
Streamline inventory management by monitoring material stock levels in real time and consequently reducing the occurrence of stockouts or overstocking.

Asset tracking challenges in construction

Asset managers and maintenance teams in the construction sector may face a number of challenges unique to the industry.

For example, construction asset management and maintenance teams are typically responsible for:

Managing geographically dispersed assets across multiple job sites, tracking the location of equipment and materials as they move between sites, and providing oversight of equipment utilization remotely.
Securing valuable assets against theft and misuse, and ultimately using tracking solutions to reduce the unique vulnerability to loss of assets located at open construction sites.
Providing highly proactive maintenance to keep equipment available and reliable despite the harsh conditions and heavy usage it will be subject to.

What do construction companies need from asset tracking solutions?

Construction companies depend on the ready availability of their critical assets. And because many of these assets are heavy, complex and costly industrial machines, they also have complex maintenance requirements.

Construction companies require asset tracking solutions that integrate seamlessly with their maintenance management strategies to ensure a strategic and coordinated approach to meeting these requirements. This is why many construction companies leverage CMMS technology, including key features like:

Real-time location tracking of equipment and materials across multiple job sites.
Automated alerts for preventive maintenance tasks based on asset usage or time intervals.
Asset utilization reports detailing how efficiently equipment is being used and how effectively resources are being allocated.
Theft prevention features like geofencing and GPS tracking, alerting the proper personnel when equipment leaves a designated area.
Mobile-friendly platforms, allowing site managers to access and update information about asset location and status from the field or remotely.

How do CMMS platforms transform asset tracking in construction?

The right CMMS can transform your construction firm’s asset tracking strategy and elevate the maintenance department to a new value-driving role. Industry-leading CMMS platforms like Limble’s offer a host of features that will simultaneously streamline your asset tracking processes and better integrate maintenance with your broader organizational strategies.

Benefits of implementing a CMMS platform like Limble include:

Automated maintenance scheduling based on equipment usage, performance metrics, or timed intervals.
Real-time updates on the location and status of all construction equipment, ensuring that machinery is properly utilized and available when needed.
Improved resource allocation, reduced project delays, and improved use of capital through more optimal equipment utilization.
Digitized prevention of theft and unauthorized use through Limble’s GPS tracking and geofencing features.
Reduced downtime and lower emergency repair costs through Limble’s full suite of proactive maintenance features.

Reducing unplanned work more than 40%

Aztec Construction Group cut unplanned work orders nearly in half by tracking and managing its assets through Limble. Watch their video testimonial to learn more about why they selected Limble and how our award-winning CMMS has transformed asset management at Aztec.

Asset tracking in oil & gas

The assets used by the oil and gas industry are numerous, varied, and often dispersed across facilities around the globe. Most oil and gas businesses utilize a combination of both fixed and mobile assets, and in many instances, those assets may be operated in harsh and extreme natural conditions such as desert temperatures, deep sea currents, and rocky, mountainous terrain.

Tracking and caring for these assets is a uniquely challenging responsibility. Key assets in oil and gas include:

Drilling equipment such as rigs, drill bits, and pumps
Processing equipment such as separators, compressors, heat exchangers, and pipelines
Vehicles such as trucks, cranes, and transportation systems for materials and personnel
Safety equipment such as fire suppression systems, safety valves, and personal protective equipment (PPE)
Infrastructure such as offshore platforms, refineries, and storage tanks

Why is asset tracking in oil & gas important?

Asset tracking is critical to the continuity, safety, and regulatory compliance of businesses working in the oil and gas industry. Managing these assets requires precise tracking and ongoing preventive maintenance to ensure continuous operation, safety, compliance, and profitability.

Because of the costs and dangers associated with the energy production industry, oil and gas companies simply can’t afford to take a reactive approach to maintenance. Those that do risk losing millions of dollars in revenue to unplanned downtime, threatening worker safety, running afoul of environment regulations, and sustaining extremely steep financial penalties for compliance failures.

In contrast, organizations with effective oil and gas asset tracking systems have the opportunity to:

Maximize asset availability by ensuring that equipment is in the right location, functional, and ready for use at all times.
Monitor compliance with regulatory conditions and safety standards by ensuring that assets are maintained properly and in adherence with internal Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Monitor equipment condition and usage, allowing for better maintenance planning and cost control.
Deploy preventive maintenance scheduling to reduce unexpected breakdowns, ensure continuous operations, and prevent the extremely costly production losses caused by unplanned downtime.
Improve resource allocation by making data-driven decisions about how best to distribute, utilize, and maintain critical assets across a global network of operating locations.

Asset tracking challenges in oil & gas

Asset managers and maintenance teams in the oil and gas industries may face a number of challenges unique to the industry.

For example, oil and gas asset management and maintenance teams are typically responsible for:

Operating in remote environments, where extreme weather, harsh environmental conditions, and complicated political landscapes make it harder to track equipment and maintain optimal performance.
Navigating complex supply chains, with assets distributed across multiple locations, often spanning the entire globe.
Ensuring regulatory compliance with numerous strict guidelines on safety, maintenance, and environmental impact.

What do oil & gas companies need from asset tracking solutions?

The challenges outlined above make effective asset tracking particularly critical to the oil and gas industry. Most oil and gas businesses rely on maintenance management platforms for help navigating these complex logistical realities.

This is why many oil & gas companies leverage CMMS technology, including key features like:

Real-time monitoring to track asset locations, conditions, and usage, even those assets in harsh and remote locations.
Predictive maintenance capabilities, leveraging advanced data analytics to anticipate the need for maintenance, to perform proactive intervention, and to prevent costly unplanned downtime.
Safety and compliance management tools including checklists and audit trails to ensure equipment is operated and maintained according to strict regulatory standards.
Durability and scalability, with tracking solutions that are robust enough to operate in harsh environments and scalable to the need of large and geographically dispersed operations.
Integration with IoT Sensors for enhanced remote access to real-time data on equipment performance and environmental conditions.

How do CMMS platforms transform asset tracking in oil & gas?

CMMS platforms are an absolute necessity for any oil and gas company operating without a sufficient asset tracking solution. CMMS platforms like Limble allow oil and gas companies to streamline and coordinate both their asset management and maintenance strategies, which can enhance safety, compliance and profitability in a challenging industry.