This presentation is split into three parts. Part one introduces you to asset tags and asset tag trends, barcode asset tags. Part two discusses asset label and asset tag designs, how to make them more effective. And part three reviews asset tag materials and installation hints from some experts.
Let's start this section by noting the trends in asset tags. Let's learn about asset tags. How do you design them? The overriding trend is that more assets are being tagged and tracked.
The tags are no longer just for businesses or for schools, but they're for hospitals, and non-profits, clinics, and even consumers. The old standby, they stamped metal asset tag, is slowly being displaced.
While we sell millions of these, the trend is really towards bar codes and ever-smaller tags. Embedded aluminum tags with a barcode, however, have become the new standard. These come in sizes as small as 3/4 of an inch round. And they can be placed almost anywhere.
At the same time, as a tracking software, it's changed radically. The time that you needed an outside tech or a VAR to set up your entire system, which typically cost $10,000 for the whole panoply of software, and scanners, and training, and installation, is also changing. You can do it yourself.
Scanners are cheap. You could even use your iPhone. Software is now really inexpensive itself. And there are new, free, online versions coming online all the time. In the end, these are great trends.
More assets are being tracked more cheaply and with better results than ever before. There are plenty of reasons why bar codes are increasingly prevalent. They are really great.
They stop transcription errors. They scan in a flash and even can link directly to that asset's web page. Plus, there is no extra cost to add a barcode to an asset tag versus an asset tag with a number only.
Here are some other thoughts.
We often see asset tags with super long, 1D bar codes. Of course, there can always be mitigating circumstances. But we recommend that you simply create an index database with another, shorter key that ties to you equipment serial number, in this case. Use letters. Use a 2D bar code.
Longer 1D code, such as the example here, are harder to scan, and as a result, are more costly themselves. And furthermore, they're harder to place that bar code tag. We're often asked about bar code scanning equipment, how to buy inexpensive scanners and where to buy them.
I love eBay. The choices are incredible there. And they're really quite inexpensive. Most scanners can now scan most bar codes.
Wand scanners, the pen types, are quite inexpensive, $10, some are even $50. Laser and non-contact scanners can be is inexpensive as $100. We've offered a key fob, which is quite inexpensive. From Motorola, it's $100. But there are others that are quite expensive, $1,000 or so.
But understand that there are also lots of free scanning applications now on the smartphones. ScanLife is the one that we've used recently for one of our 2D asset bar code tag applications. I love the sound of their scan.
RFID asset tags are an entirely different topic. We love them, but are frankly rather disappointed that more companies have not been using them. Once they're in place, these RFID asset tag systems are really slick. Here's one example.
We have a customer who's installed a system, a contractor with his RFID-based ID badge, and a tool that's also been tagged with an RFID tag. You can walk out of their tool crib through a portal. The system automatically determines who has that tool, when they left, and, of course, when they come back in.
But these RFID systems are really best for big companies when they need to track a particular piece of equipment. Think expensive tools, work-in-process bins, pallets, every day or every minute. Given the cost to implement an RFID asset tag system, the troubles of doing an audit, also, of a room, say, of many PCs-- they're all clustered together, and trying to read them discreetly and through all that metal cover causes some great problems for RFID scanning.
These are all big problems that need to be overcome. The jury's out for RFID asset tags.
This is the end of the first video on asset tags.
There are two other related videos.
The next part is on how to design an asset tag. And the third video is about asset tag materials and installation hints.
I invite you to listen to these other two videos, as well.
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