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Imagine a large educational establishment with assets spread across
a wide campus and only manual methods of stock taking and reconciliation.
The task was extremely time consuming, often inaccurate and incomplete
as often items where not in the location they were supposed to be
in. Many of the assets had moderately high values and needed to be
tracked and traced for their life as an asset within the campus
We were asked by this local educational establishment to help solve
an Asset Tracking headache they currently had where by they needed
to track manor computer based assets around a considerable sized campus.
PDT Associates developed a simple and effective Tracking System. Based
on the tried and tested method of permanent adhesive barcode labels,
PDT Associates designed a barcode scanning system which involved Symbol
Technologies PDT3100 handheld scanning terminals.
Software developed especially for the site enables members of the
Finance Department to scan and record barcoded asset numbers at specific
target locations. Each location on the large site has a unique ‘location
code’, and this code number of stored by the hand-held scanner
along with individual asset numbers and date and time details. The
users of the system simply enter the location code into the hand-held
terminal and scan the asset barcodes – everything else is handled
automatically by the hand-held terminal’s software application.
Back at the finance office, the data captured by the scanner is simply
transferred into a PC, where is can be merged with other financial
information for analysis by standard spreadsheets, or other programs.
By recording the information electronically, there is much less opportunity
for human error, and the process of recording asset / location information
can be carried out swiftly.
The complete system was supplied, including barcode labels, scanners
and the scanner application software tailored to the customer’s
requirements. This followed a complete study of the operation and
then writing a technical specification and test plan for the project
against which the system was tested and delivered.
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