Background

Yakima Valley College is a community college in Washington state spread over 5 different sites and 35 buildings across all sites. They needed a better way to track and manage over 7,500 assets. Prior to Grey Trunk, they were using a software system that could only track assets with barcodes. The barcodes were very small, so every asset had to be handled to scan the barcode during the audit, which took valuable time.

Challenge

Yakima Valley was spending about 25 minutes per classroom conducting fixed asset audits. They have between 300-400 classrooms on campus. Some of the assets were even in the ceiling, so finding them or reaching the assets and then scanning the barcode became very tedious and oftentimes, unsafe. Performing an asset inventory in this way became very intrusive to the students in the classroom as well.

Solution

They knew they wanted to print RFID tags on-site so they never had to worry about reprinting tags. Yakima Valley worked with Metalcraft on choosing the Universal On Site Printable Mini RFID tag for their project. Metalcraft helped configure the SATO CL4NX printer with the proper RFID tag specifications so they could get up and running fast.

Yakima Valley chose Grey Trunk RFID software to work with the Metalcraft RFID tags for their overall asset tracking project. Using passive UHF RFID, they are now able to scan assets in the ceiling and hard-to-reach areas because they no longer need a line of sight to capture the asset data.

Because the software is easy to use and understand, they were able to get new personnel trained in as little as 10 minutes.

Result

By utilizing Grey Trunk RFID's asset tracking software in combination with Metalcraft's Onsite Printable Universal Mini, Yakima Valley College reduced their time from 25 minutes down to 5 minutes or less per classroom for audits. Across the 300-400 total classrooms, this is a significant time-saving. Yakima Valley conducts bi-annual fixed asset inventories. With the power of RFID, they are able to capture assets that they can't even physically see, resulting in greater accuracy for their audits.

To learn more about our asset tracking solutions, contact us today at [email protected].