From Ice Cream to Patient Care, Every Business Counts Inventory: with or without RFID

July 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Warrenton, Virginia.   Suzanne Pedone, President of Inventory Management Solutions, helps plenty of companies conduct their annual physical inventory.  Her business helps client businesses to comply with accounting rules by accurately tracking assets.  She's no stranger to the necessity to crawl under desks to read their serial number.  Suzanne knows the periodic asset count is essential to every business operation.  "Tax accountants need the data to track property tax and depreciation," she says.  "Facilities managers want to know the physical location.  I.T. managers need to know when equipment needs updating and maintenance."  

The essential knowledge of where an asset is located is a critical component of responsible accounting, as we learned from the  Enron meltdown in 2001.  Suzanne's company brings in a team to apply identifying tags to each item.   Most companies, she acknowledges, begin their asset tracking experience by listing their items on an Excel spreadsheet.  While this may have worked for up to 500 items, it becomes unmanageable as the company grows.  

"Companies eventually require a wall-to-wall inventory validation with a Sarbanes-Oxley compliant software," she adds.  

It's at this time, when the company adds a second location and exceeds 500 assets, Pedone recommends applying Radio-Frequency-Identification (RFID) tags to fixed assets.  RFID tags cost more than simple 2-D barcode labels.  "The difference is more than repaid in labor savings during inventory counts," says Pedone.

Carl Brown, CEO of SimplyRFID, agrees.  "With more than 500 assets, I can point a NOX Vault handheld RFID reader in a room.  In six seconds, I can accurately collect the data to inventory every item in that room.  It could take three hours or more to count the items in that same room with a barcode scanner."

Brown's NOX Vault system includes the handheld readers plus RFID-enabled tags in both paper and metal versions.  RFID systems combine with inventory management software such as Sage or RedBeam.  "Our system is indifferent to the type of inventory software used by the customer," says Brown.  "Whatever the customer has in place, even if it is still an Excel spreadsheet, the NOX Vault will collect the data and deliver it to the system. That way, the labor cost of physically counting the items is slashed, possibly from days to minutes."

Brown sees the use of RFID for inventory management as a driving force to increase productivity.  IMS and SimplyRFID have jointly provided RFID-enabled inventory management solutions at multiple customer sites.  

For more information, contact Suzanne Pedone at Inventory Management Solutions
http://www.imsolutions.net/rfid/  or Carl Brown at SimplyRFID.  http://www.SimplyRFID.com

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