Modern classrooms rely heavily on additional tools to provide an appropriate learning environment. Gone are the days of chalkboards and pencils; now, we have smart boards, IR pens, laptops and various other technologies to help the next generation learn. However, one thing that hasn’t changed is the potential for equipment to be misplaced or lost by students. With limited education budgets, losing expensive equipment such as this can be a significant expense to replace. This is why more schools are investing in asset-tracking solutions to maintain their equipment stock for generations of students to come.
How Does Barcode Asset Tracking Help?
Barcoding tracking is an essential part of maintaining an organised inventory of equipment. However, managing a school is a complex process, and no one wants the additional headaches of having to locate misplaced equipment or tools. Resorting to purchase replacements should be a last resort. Fortunately, modern asset-tracking solutions can quickly solve this by enabling easy monitoring, tracking, and recording of the status of your labelled equipment or tools.
Pen and paper solutions are a thing of the past. These older solutions have been surpassed by far more efficient systems that eliminate the chance of human error and lost records and enable administrators to gain greater control of their assets.
How Asset Tracking Saves Money
Asset tracking has several consistent elements that are common no matter what sector it is used in. First, it is a helpful tool to maintain your current equipment stock, but it can do this in multiple ways, either by monitoring their use or helping your maintenance programs. For example, many schools, colleges and universities will invest in advanced equipment, such as computer servers or scientific instruments, to enhance the learning experience for students. Valuable additions like this will need to be cared for with regular maintenance checks to help prolong their operational lifecycle.
You can use barcodes such as adhesive tracking labels to physically and digitally tag your equipment to tracking software. GSM Barcoding provides G-Smart assets software that can effectively report details on your tagged items wirelessly and compile this data into a secure place for your consideration. This is very handy for maintenance programs as the software will alert you when something needs to be checked and help you create a reliable maintenance schedule.
Mobile computers can also be connected to this invaluable system to provide more flexibility when monitoring your tools and equipment. In addition, this professional-grade computer program can be used with thermal transfer printers onsite to provide labels whenever needed.
What Can Barcodes Track?
The short answer is everything. The variety of objects you can add to your asset tracking is endless, but to create a more efficient system, you will want to limit your efforts to just the valuable and at-risk items. Of course, every school will have a different equipment inventory, but you can break everything down into physical and soft assets.
Your physical assets could be equipment from the science lab, computers and even smaller items such as textbooks. The material items essential to running your school can all be tagged with durable barcode labels to help you monitor them over time. We recommend using asset tracking on the more expensive items, especially on any equipment to be loaned out to students. Our effective asset-tracking systems can collect your maintenance records and track warranties associated with your various physical assets.
This can be considered part of your internal preventative maintenance schedule and monitored with the assistance of an effective asset-tracking system.
Barcodes VS RFID
Whilst there are many benefits to choosing barcode labels for asset tracking, there is an additional upgrade worth considering, RFID. These battery-powered tracking tags have been employed for security, monitoring and asset tracking for many years. Although they require a significant investment, they can offer additional wireless tracking of tagged items for as long as their battery holds out. There are two primary choices to consider when looking at RFID. Active RFID tags have an installed microchip and antenna that holds data recognised by your wireless network and can be accessed at all times. Passive RFID needs to be read by a gateway scanner or handheld device to access their data. Tags are more expensive to replace when they get old or are lost or damaged, which is why most establishments prefer the reliability of high-quality asset tracking labels for monitoring their valuable equipment.
GSM Barcoding supplies the largest selection of barcoding and asset-tracking solutions in the UK. With our G-Smart assets software, you can track and monitor your assets around your premises with a live, web-based system that successfully reduces losses, prevents thefts and improves the overall organisation of your valuable equipment. You can learn more about our range of smart solutions for education across our site.
