5 Tips for Better Equipment Management

Your equipment is important to you, it’s important to your business. Knowing where your assets are and how they are behaving ensures your operations run smoothly and efficiently. But managing your equipment isn’t always so straightforward, there are many timely obstacles when it comes to equipment management. Ensure you get the most out of your hard-earned investments with our top tips for better equipment management. 

Equipment management starts with equipment tracking. Equipment tracking is a way of keeping a record of everything a business owns and how it is behaving, allowing users to access the location of their equipment in real time. Equipment tracking relates to physical assets also known as tangible assets and works by attaching physical tags or barcodes to these assets. This enables the equipment to be tracked as each time the barcode or tag is scanned, the location of the asset is automatically updated in the online asset register. These kinds of assets include:

• Appliances
• Computers
• HVAC equipment
• IT equipment
• Lights
• Production equipment
• Furniture
• Copiers and printers
• Safety equipment
• Signs
• Office equipment

 From a centralised online dashboard, users can view the status of each piece of equipment, its usage and assignment schedules, making managing maintenance and repairs a breeze.

Here are our 5 top tips for managing your equipment:

Your first task in productive equipment management is to develop an accurate and real-time inventory of your assets. Your staff should count all your equipment, photograph it, label it, and store all this information in a centralised online system, ideally cloud-based 

The advantage of the cloud is that the information is accessible at any time anywhere in the world, making it safer and more reliable. Information saved in the cloud is also much more resistant to disasters and data loss, which is pivotal to your organisation because you can’t afford to inventory equipment all over again.

If you want to manage your equipment effectively you need to know where it is and how it’s behaving. Taking photos of your equipment and uploading them to an online register. Setting up your asset tracking system begins with tagging your physical assets. Choosing the right tag for your application is key to ensuring full functionality of your asset tracking system. It’s important to get to know which tag is right for your environment and needs. With itemit’s asset tracking software you can simply tag assets and scan, and even photograph them for instant recognition within an asset register.

Assigning important assets to appropriate users can help to protect your assets. An asset’s importance can be based on a number of factors, including its sensitivity, criticality, value, or the compliance requirements placed upon it. Important assets should be assigned to responsible people within your team who can then establish and maintain appropriate safeguards for those assets. This also helps to establish accountability and minimises the risk of loss, theft or unauthorised usage. With itemit’s check-in and check-out functionality you can ensure your assets are where they need to be and with the right people. When your team checks a piece of equipment in or out the asset manager is automatically notified.

Tracking your equipment with asset management software allows you to gather lots and lots of data about your inventory. Utilise this data and take those insights to the next level by understanding how your equipment is working and behaving. 

• How often do you use a particular tool or machine?
• Who uses it? 
• When do your employees use this equipment?
• Where is it used? 

Answers to these questions can give you the visibility and control to make better strategy and purchasing decisions.

You can also leverage equipment management software to predict and schedule maintenance and repairs. Breakdowns can’t be avoided entirely and are often unexpected but you can plan for the things you can control like equipment servicing, and apply data analytics to monitor equipment performance and predict repairs. This information will aid in managing the associated costs and help to prevent spiraling bills. Storing details about the purchase date, warranty expiration date, together with the data about usage in an asset register can help you to prioritise repairing your most used equipment.

The operations of many businesses hinge on the smooth running of their equipment, which can make any asset downtime expensive. Managing and tracking equipment with asset software provides organisations with real-time location and usage data on their critical equipment. Organisations can leverage this information to plan, prioritise and schedule more effectively, increasing their operational efficiency and performance. 

Find out more about how our equipment management can take your business to the next level. Contact our friendly and helpful team today. You can reach them at team@itemit.com. Alternatively, you may want to consider signing up for our 14-day Free Trial to find out just how well itemit’s software can work for you. 

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