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Success Story
DRMP Enhances Asset Management with RFID Techology
Civil engineering and surveying firm uses Zebra RFID solutions to increase asset control, security, and visibility
Zebra Success Story: DRMP, Inc.
Overview: Service Provider Challenge
Track and manage high-value assets across multiple states for large-scale government and private projects while giving project managers insights necessary to maximize both security and control.
Benefits / Outcomes
- Improves security and recoverability for assets in the field
- Increases control over high-value inventory with centralized visibility
- Enhances auditing process and identified record inaccuracies
- Creates opportunities to automate and improve asset management to better serve government and private clients
About DRMP, Inc.
When a group of engineers and surveyors founded DRMP in 1977, they came together with the primary goal of becoming a full-service firm that takes a collaborative approach to producing superior infrastructure for its customers. Today, the firm continues to search for new opportunities to collaborate with clients and help them grow using the latest technology solutions.
One key to DRMP's success is its multi-disciplined experience and world-class technical expertise that helps solve mission-critical needs for a wide variety of clients in the private sector, as well as state and federal agencies. The firm has helped government clients across service branches design and deploy comprehensive solutions for civil infrastructure, structural engineering, survey and mapping, construction services, ecological resources, geographic information systems (GIS) and subsurface utility engineering.
The Challenge
As DRMP signs contracts with more government clients, its inventory of field assets grows and becomes increasingly dispersed. Effectively tracking and managing high-value surveying assets can make all the difference in the speed at which a project gets completed, while also minimizing the potential for equipment loss that would negatively impact the bottom line.
By augmenting asset management processes with Zebra RFID technology and cloud-based asset management software platform from A2B Tracking, DRMP can take inventory of tools faster, improve visibility into assets for accounting and identify new opportunities to scale its collaborative work with government clients. "RFID solutions from Zebra and A2B Tracking are invaluable to our business," says Todd Catella, Asset and Inventory Manager at DRMP. "As we continue to work on high-value government projects, RFID-enabled asset management helps project managers ensure we have the right tools in the field to get large-scale projects done on time and on budget for our clients."As DRMP signs contracts with more government clients, its inventory of field assets grows and becomes increasingly dispersed. Effectively tracking and managing high-value surveying assets can make all the difference in the speed at which a project gets completed, while also minimizing the potential for equipment loss that would negatively impact the bottom line.
When working on large-scale government projects, DRMP project managers don't have time for manually inventorying tools, however, it's a necessary part of the job. Assigning equipment to project sites and knowing their last known location is a part of managing project required assets.
"Sometimes a single tool for a government project can cost over $70,000," Catella says. “We can't increase the speed of inventory management to the job site if we do not know who had it last and where it is."
RFID technology helps ensure that project managers and assigned field crews can quickly scan assets through Pelican cases, eliminating the time required for unpacking items to check inventory. By streamlining end-to-end inventory management processes, DRMP can focus on getting the job completed in a timely manner and on budget. The firm has more time to focus on what matters most, working collaboratively with government clients to design and implement the best infrastructure possible.
Zebra's experience with government support and its partnerships with industry experts give us confidence that its technology will help us improve control over high-value projects and assets.
The Solution
DRMP coordinates a wide variety of government projects, including flying drones over a hurricane disaster area, assessing damage for a state agency and 3D LIDAR scanning a road project, as well as obtaining a complete perspective for future design, designing a world-class bridge, surveying an underground utility for an ITS design project or federal sites for road improvements, inspecting a bridge for design improvements or repairs due to safety concerns and identifying endangered species in the path of a proposed road design plan.
All these projects require specialized and expensive tools in the field. Project managers needed a better way to track all the tools necessary to complete these project when they are so widely dispersed. Using Zebra RFID solutions and a robust tracking platform from A2B Tracking, DRMP gives project managers instant, centralized insights into where assets are in the field, so they can make evidence-based decisions that best serve clients.
"We use Zebra RFD8500s to feed information to the A2B Tracking Cloud database which gives us deep insights into our assets in the field," Catella says. "This technology helps our project managers track, trace, and tally assets in real time to keep high-value projects on schedule and avoid security issues with our most expensive assets."
Those assets can be assigned to an individual with an expected date of return and notes associated with the asset assignment. Asset records within the database also include photos of the devices, photos of serial numbers, calibration dates, other documentation unique to the asset and additional customizable fields. In the case that a specialized tool is lost or stolen in the field, project managers can recover or replace assets quickly with that information.
The combination of RFID tags, RFD8500 sleds, and a backend tracking database gives accounting greater visibility into all assets and creates an opportunity to run enhanced audits. These audits help DRMP accountants update serial numbers that may have been previously recorded incorrectly in other backend systems, reducing asset reconciliation errors on future annual inventory audits.
"Record accuracy is critical when working on government projects,” Catella says. "RFID technology maximizes the integrity of our records to give us a strong foundation to provide clients with the best possible service no matter how large the project is."
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
"Any time we implement new technology, we make flexibility, scalability and integration our top priorities," says Catella. "Zebra solutions and A2B Tracking software give us a strong foundation for efficient inventory and asset management today while helping us uncover new opportunities to streamline our processes so we can stay laser focused on serving our government and private clients at all levels."
Today, DRMP is using its RFD8500s in conjunction with Android tablets or Android cell phones using A2B Tracking's cloud-hosted Asset Management platform to complete manual inventory checks. Simply bringing RFID technology to asset management gives the firm an ability to complete projects faster with fewer inventory issues. Early results have shown DRMP leaders that expanding RFID usage can deliver even greater benefits.
DRMP is also considering deploying fixed RFID tag readers to complement RFD8500s in the field. By deploying fixed readers, project managers can collect constant insights into inventory across all projects and generate more data to improve overall asset management.
In addition to fixed readers, there's also potential for DRMP to implement Zebra RFID print technologies to further integrate its asset management processes. With everything from label printing to field tracking and storage management covered in a single suite of technology solutions, DRMP can further automate processes to minimize operational expenses and better serve client needs.
"Government projects come with unique scalability challenges," Catella says. "We need to take advantage of every opportunity to implement technology solutions that make it easier to scale according to client demands. Zebra's experience with government support and its partnerships with industry experts give us confidence that its technology will help us improve control over high-value projects and assets."
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