Best Practices for Asset Tracking

The practice of asset tracking is the continuously collecting and organizing data about the state of a company’s assets, from the frequency of use to downtime, bottlenecks, and how often they require maintenance or changing of parts.

However, asset tracking isn’t just about gathering massive amounts of data for show. With proper analysis, you can use this data to prevent unplanned machinery downtime by scheduling servicing in advance and doing preventative maintenance.

The more data you have, the more valuable insights and information you can extract about your business’s resources. With the correct data, you can make informed decisions about utilizing the tools at your disposal.

Keep Things Customized

A good asset tracking software will give you the option to customize its various features and aspects, creating the perfect monitoring tool for your business. That’s especially important because your data’s value doesn’t end with quantity. It also depends on how it’s presented and collected. Some of the most important aspects of tracking software to customize include:

1. Interface: The software’s interface is the first thing a user sees, and research shows that the way an interface presenting data is designed plays a significant role in how it’s perceived and acted upon. With tracking software, that information is data and metrics.

Make sure you can customize your software’s interface for maximum accessibility for you and your team. This includes adjusting everything from the color scheme and font to prioritizing critical metrics and notifications in the display sequence.

2. Tags: Tags are an excellent way to segment your data according to department or functionality and even identify individual assets. Tags can be numeric or QR codes, which employees scan to log or pull up information regarding a specific asset. The fewer assets share a tag, the more insightful data about the use and wear you can get.

3. Data Being Tracked: Tracking everything can be just as bad as tracking nothing. Set up your system to specifically track certain assets that you need insights on, and ignore the rest. Customizability means you can always adjust tracking settings as your business’s needs change.

Set Your Pace

The most important aspect of running a successful business is setting goals and communicating them to your staff. Your data will be more accurate if you have an accurate expectation of how long tasks take and understand the workload your machinery can handle in a set period. With a preplanned and predictable pace, you’ll be able to optimize your asset use and allow your employees to maintain consistency in their workload and quality.

Any time you need to manually log information into your system, be sure you’re keeping a steady pace with your usual work, so it doesn’t interrupt your workflow too much. Additionally, set expectations and benchmarks as soon as possible when welcoming new staff or machinery, so you can tell how valuable the addition is to your business’s productivity.

This also means knowing the standard pace of your work and how quickly, based on your workflow, various assets might require maintenance or replacement. That way, you can undertake preventative maintenance and stop problems before they happen. Use PM scheduling software to stay on top of preventative maintenance.

Stay Organized

Disorganized data is useless data. Without knowing which metrics belong to which asset or comparing relevant schematics with one another, you can’t properly utilize the information you do have. A good tracking system will let you automatically organize data for future reference and analysis.

This also helps when introducing new staff members or assets to your business. Knowing where everything is, makes it easier to implement changes. However, organizing data isn’t as simple as tagging it. You need to be intentional in your organizational process and keep the most critical data handy.

Be On the Same Page

Your entire team—or a dedicated portion of it—needs to be familiar with your asset tracking system, knowing how to extract and log information as needed. Additionally, your methodology of extracting and inputting data needs to be standardized. That can save you time fixing errors and training new people.

Benchmarks are for both staff members and assets. You need to let your staff know what you expect of them regarding workload, accountability, and ethics. With the help of asset-tracking software, you can make data-backed decisions on how to increase employee productivity based on individual circumstances and needs.

Finding the Sweet Spot in the Middle

You need to be able to tell the difference between data with potential and useless data that takes up disk space and computational power. The data you track should result in insights that inform your decision-making. That way, you and your entire team can benefit.