Small Parts, Big Expenses

Gary Dennis

Operators’ ability to manage inventory has come a long way from clipboards and spreadsheets to scanners and barcodes.  And with the rise of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence as well as barcodes, and RFID tags and their associated scanners the future looks really… automated.
 
There is a gap though, and today many companies are leaking bottom line revenue through the frustrating but steady “disappearing act” of small but expensive, hard to track, parts and equipment used in field service operations.  Scanners and tags are expensive and don’t always work well getting items into the warehouse (think pallets loaded with lots of inventory).  And in other cases barcodes are difficult to locate and read.  As a result, it is very easy to lose control of small field service inventory items once they get to the truck. 
 
This is especially true if technicians aren’t provided tools – or the expectation – to regularly record parts and equipment used during installation and repair activities.  Ten-cent connectors may not justify a lot of effort to inventory and serialized inventory such as $500 set top boxes are documented upon receipt and when activated.  But what about the rest of the truck inventory?  How do you manage, account for, and reduce unnecessary expense for non-serialized truck parts and equipment inventory?
 
With the increased complexity in communications service delivery, there are plenty of bottom-line reasons in trucks, warehouses, and storerooms to explore ways to improve operational approaches to inventory management reduce the loss of small parts and equipment that mount up to a big expense.
 
opXL makes it easy to get end-to-end inventory management right, whether that means barcodes, RFID tags, associated readers and scanners, or a smartphone app.  That means you CAN inventory parts and equipment - via several methods - in every truck, every day, in under 5 minutes.