Monday March 08, 2010 - Not being able to find tools when you need them is more than an inconvenience. The time spent looking for them eats into the productivity of your organization. Think about it. If you spend 10 minutes per day looking for a misplaced tool, that adds up to an entire 40-hour workweek each year. Even worse, if a tool is misplaced or lost you have to replace it.

Lost tools have an even bigger impact on profitability. Let's say an employee needs a drill for a home improvement project. Without asking, he "borrows" a $60 cordless drill right before he leaves for vacation.

The next week, another employee needs a cordless drill and can't find one. He has to spend time thoroughly checking the tool crib and likely other areas where the drill may have been misplaced. After spending about half an hour, he gives up and tells his supervisor that he can't find the drill. The supervisor then has to stop what he's doing and make a quick search for the drill, pronounce it lost when he can't find it, and then authorize the purchase of another one. On top of the cost of the $60 drill, you now have another $10 to $20 dollars in employee search time, or a replacement cost of $80.

That in itself is bad enough, but think about this. If the company has an after-tax profit margin of 10%, it now needs to bring in another $800 of revenue to replace a $60 drill.

All of this can and should be avoided through proper tool tracking and management. Automatic identification and data collection (AIDC) technologies and techniques that have already proven their value in traditional fixed asset tracking and tracking the products in your warehouse are readily adaptable to tool accountability. In fact, they make it simple and convenient to keep up with these items.

"I've seen companies put a bar code label on each employee's hard hat," said Jeremy Muller, Customer Service Manager at RedBeam, Inc. "When everyone picks up their tools for the day, the manager uses RedBeam Check In/Check Out to scan the hard hat and then scan all the tools being checked out. The process is fast and easy. At the end of the day, they scan the tools back in and then run a report to see if anything hasn't been returned to the tool crib."

RedBeam makes it easy to barcode, scan, and track tools and equipment to ensure that employees always have them when and where they need them.

For additional information on available tool tracking products from RedBeam, click here.