Q. Are any of your organizations using good technology with RFID capabilities to manage their tool and equipment inventory? I’m helping our equipment yard manager research some solutions and thought I’d start here for some feedback. Toolwatch and Toolhound are a couple I have heard of but know nothing about.

A. This is on my research list too - so I am interested in other folks’ feedback and experiences with this. We have Viewpoint for accounting software so hope to integrate with that for equipment revenue processing and charging to jobs.

A. We use Viewpoint and it is on our need list, but haven't started. We use Viewpoint for our equipment so we would like to see integration with it (or have it easily bridged). 

Todd Eldredge 

A. Connie and Todd, could you not just use citrix xenapp and push to ipad ?

A. Viewpoint does not handle the RFID aspect, just the equipment. We would love to tag everything with RFID and have easy check in/out. Tracking formwork and tools as they enter a site from a handheld scanner or similar device. Or as trucks pass under the entries of the jobsite having a fixed position RFID scanner clocking everything would be pretty cool. We had demos of the possibilities a few years back and didn’t get beyond that. We did see some pretty awesome uses, but didn’t have the time or manpower to act on it at that time. I’m sure things have changed so I’d love to hear how people are using RFID.

A. This is what we are looking for as well. I’ll add the need for RFID tagging small tools would also be helpful as they tend to "walk away" sometimes in the field. Is anyone on this forum using ToolWatch (www.toolwatch.com) or ToolHound (www.toolhound.com) . From what I know of them they might have systems that meet these objectives and with some work could probably tie into our accounting/equipment systems.

A. Todd, I would like to track material delivery and truck movements from my quarries/hotmix plants via RFID or barcode. Any real-world experience you could share would be most appreciated.

Dean Word Co., Ltd.

A. While I am pleased with Viewpoint’s product in general, their equipment module is lacking in many ways, but we knew that when we bought it. From what I saw of VP’s Mobile Field Manager solution, it did not cut it for us for equipment handling. But I keep hoping it will improve and that they will adopt some additional input pathways such as barcode or RFID to interface seamlessly instead of all this piecemeal software.

A.  Viewpoint has been very positive for our organization as well. There is a great amount of integration between modules, which is nice. It’s the old everything in one basket vs. everything individual and separate. If you buy best of applications from multiple companies, like one product for accounting, one for equipment, one for project management., etc. tying them together is a pain in the rear. If you buy a product that has a lot of it built in, you have better control of the data and double entry. Our goal was to get everything under one hood. agcXML would be interested to get software companies to buy into because you could theoretically tie in dissimilar systems easily, getting the best of both worlds. The effort is out there.