Concrete Evidence That TracerPlus is the Mobile Barcode & RFID Software for You
“It’s amazing how easy it is to track everything we have in the yard, we can find what we need in no time”
Founded in 1993, Phoenix Precast Products manufactures all manner of precast products, ranging from small concrete steps to 10,000 pound concrete structures. With an ever-expanding yard of concrete structures in various sizes, Phoenix Precast Products knew that something had to be done to keep track of all of their inventory.
Originally the idea to track their precast components started in 2012 but made very little progress after looking into all manner of applications. They were searching for a way to track the items in their yard, and then import the scans into their custom database, Titan. The problem that Phoenix Precast ran into was that almost every application was cumbersome or required coding to function. On top of that Titan had a handful of modules, but they all suffered issues when attempting to communicate with each other. In 2016 Randy Peterson, the IT Engineer for Phoenix Precast Products joined the project. After discovering TracerPlus, development on the project took off.
Working with TracerPlus, Phoenix Precast established a system to track their products in the yard by using the RFID tags embedded in their concrete structures. With the use of devices such as the Zebra MC919Z handheld RFID reader, and a number of Samsung tablets in conjunction with Blueberry RFID readers, Phoenix Precast was able to keep track of their products no matter where they were in the yard.
“It’s amazing how easy it is to track everything we have in the yard, we can find what we need in no time” says Peterson.
To supplement the RFID tracking and inventory taking place in the yard, Phoenix Precast also took the opportunity to leverage the power of fixed RFID with the ClearStream RFID application. By constructing a “portal” themselves for only a few hundred dollars in steel, Phoenix Precast utilized a number of Zebra FX9500 fixed RFID readers to track their products as they are shipped out to customers.
“Why would we buy some big premade thing when we can just make it ourselves for next to nothing in steel, and with a couple FX9500’s” says Peterson. Pictured below is the handmade fixed RFID portal.
All of the RFID scans from both the fixed and mobile RFID readers are processed through ClearStream and TracerPlus respectively before being seamlessly entered into their preexisting database.
With the success of the implementation at their facility, Phoenix Precast is looking to bring the project to their other facilities as well.
By leveraging the power and flexibility of both mobile and fixed RFID, Phoenix Precast Products is able to ensure that items can be located easily and shipped efficiently. Contact PTS to find out how TracerPlus and our other powerful barcode and RFID applications can be implemented to aid your business today.