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Fabricom (site fabri.com) is a major Belgian construction and service company and a member of the group of companies GDF Suez.
In 2011, Fabricom began the first phase of implementing RFID to track and monitor 92,000 tools and other corporate property. The company provides tools centrally to its units on the basis of “internal leasing”. The system is debugged and works without failures, but in the arsenal of 6 warehouses with tools and dozens of running projects, any accidental error can lead to material and technical losses.
Features
The difficulty in identifying working tools is that the identification numbers engraved on them are very quickly erased and become unreadable. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of implementing an effective tool management system for Fabricom, given that accurate identification is of paramount importance for the management of the tool life cycle, especially since some of them are subject to regular testing for the technical condition.
To develop and implement the project, Fabricom chose PHI DATA, the Belgian leader in the field of automatic identification and tracking. First of all, PHI DATA conducted an in-depth study to select the label of the desired frequency, shape, and method of attachment.
The company has extensive experience with RFID, it puts high demands to RFID equipment. Most terminal manufacturers simply add an RFID module to their conventional barcode terminals when creating new hardware. Nordic ID products were created from the ground up in order to read RFID data. As a result, they receive a higher level of data collection quality, higher productivity.
Status
Today, Fabricom uses 30 Nordic ID Merlin HF RFID readers, through which data about the equipment enters the enterprise resource management system. Terminals are equipped with bar code readers, as this is necessary when sending equipment to the destination. By equipping their property with RFID tags, Fabricom is able to track the property in real time and to know the exact location of the tools, wherever they are. After the first implementation phase, Fabricom plans to expand the use of RFID and use it to track equipment not only in its own warehouses but also at construction sites.