Month: November 2019

If you are a business owner and starting to explore asset management strategies, you are probably wondering about the answer to the asset tag vs. barcode label question. In other words: What is the difference (if any) between the asset tag and the barcode label?

Actually, there is quite a bit to know about the asset tag vs. barcode label debate. First and foremost, barcodes and asset tags are both printed separately and applied to something at a later time. They both also tend to feature barcodes, though an asset tag might also contain a customized array of numbers and letters that are pre-defined by the company using them.

That is where similarities in the asset tag vs. barcode label issue end and where the differences begin.

When Barcodes Are More Than Barcodes

As you get into a discussion about the differences between the barcodes and the asset tags, it is best to define each separately. Let’s start with barcode labels.

Barcodes are printed on labels which are then applied to products and other items. Their black lines and bars are read by a scanner and translated into data in a specific system. They are put to use tracking goods in warehouses, packages and shipments, offices, and most commonly in retail settings. They can be used in bulk, such as a single barcode label applied to thousands of items and containing the same data. The latter is how barcode labels work in grocery stores and retail settings.

That is also a key differentiator in the discussion of asset tag vs. barcode label because asset tags are usually entirely unique.

Asset tags are labels made of different materials but which are affixed to equipment, inventory, or tools and which are used to track an asset’s whereabouts, condition, and other details. Asset tags are used individually, and though (as noted), they may feature a barcode, that series of bars and lines are associated with that one, single asset.

For example, an asset tag might be associated to a laptop owned by a company and when scanned it might reveal which employee is responsible for the computer, when it was bought, where it is located, which operating software it has, which vendor supplied it, serial numbers, and more. That data can be automatically or manually updated, and the information about the laptop can be used to gauge everything from depreciation to whether or not it has been lost.

So, if you have been weighing the asset tag vs. barcode label issue in the hopes of determining which is the best for your company’s needs, you might now know that both have their place. The asset tags are part of your asset management strategy and use barcodes, but barcode labels can be used for inventory of a more general nature. If you are eager to begin developing an access tag strategy, contact EXPRESS today and enjoy identification and asset tags made simple and to your specific needs.

Today, it has become the modern practice of large public and private corporations that own a large number of assets to tag such assets for easy identification, among many other reasons. If you have decided to tag the assets owned by your organization, you need to decide which assets need tagging and what type of tag to go for that is not only durable but cost-effective.

What are property tags and how are they used?

Does your organization own a lot of office equipment like laptops, printers, and scanners? Business enterprises all over the world use different types of equipment relevant to their field to get work done. With so many employees working at a high pace using so many inventories at the same time, keeping track of all these inventories represents a challenge that they take very seriously. The only way organizations do this successfully is through Asset Management.

To better manage your assets effectively, you have to tag them with barcodes or unique serial numbers, which will then be used to track them at every point in time. To make your tags more aesthetic, you may even consider using your organization’s logo for better identification. In addition to this, there is no restriction on the type of tag you use based on their materials, color, or sizes. What is most important is that the tags serve the purpose for which they were produced.

Tags have multipurpose usage and some of the things you can use a property tag for include:

Equipment Tracking: If you own a warehouse and there is a lot of plant and machinery in the warehouse in need of management, you can use labels like RFID and barcodes to track each individual piece of equipment as it moves from one point to another. This can also prove pivotal if assets in your warehouse tend to be moved out for external use by employees.

Inventory Control: One of the most fundamental uses of property tags is to keep stock of inventories. If you place tags on your inventory, you can track the quantity of inventory you have all year round without having to do a headcount every time.

Maintenance Schedule: Maintaining just a few types of equipment is not a hard task, but things become a lot more complicated when you are dealing with hundreds and thousands of pieces of equipment. With tags, you can easily identify the equipment requiring maintenance before they break down. You can also monitor the maintenance history of each individual asset. 

Where are property tags used?

Now that we know the purpose of property tags, we will identify locations and industries where they are commonly deployed.

1. Healthcare Industry

Property tags have been massively deployed in the healthcare industry for a long time. Biomedical engineers, for instance, use property tags to track hospital equipment and other medical devices used regularly in a hospital setting.

2. Education Industry

Property tags are also used by schools and colleges to track their assets and equipment. Audiovisual equipment like IT gadgets, laptops, and tablets are common examples of such assets.

3. Warehouses

If there is any location where you will surely find property tags, it is at large warehouses where there are multiple different types of equipment performing advanced functions. Administrators use property tags to streamline workflow and to control inventory usage.

4. Utility Companies

Companies that operate outside a controlled environment where their movable assets are exposed to harsh weather elements often use property tags. RFID labels may even be used, so long as they are durable enough. 

Why has labeling assets become so important?

Labeling assets is important because such practices help you develop a robust maintenance strategy. It also helps you store your records in a single, central platform for present or future use.  Property tags also:

• Aid in access to relevant information about each individual asset
• Eliminate human error as far as asset management is concerned
• Improve intra-department collaboration
• Inspect and audit of assets for regulatory control
• Calculate the lifecycle depreciation for each individual asset
• Reduce the risk of theft

How to decide on the right property tag

Before you deploy property tags, you first need to decide in advance which assets you wish to tag. Here are some of the ways you can shortlist assets according to selected criteria.

Movable Assets: Have a high risk of misplacement or theft, so they have to be tracked. Make sure you tag office equipment that is used at multiple locations. Labeling kits and bundles of such equipment also makes it easy for managers to monitor them at external worksites.

Fixed Assets: If your organization uses a large number of fixed assets like tables and chairs, computers, etc., tagging them and regulating their use will help in avoiding frequent breakdowns.

High Value Assets: All high value assets should have property tags, even if the asset is fixed and secure. If there’s a chance your office, store, or warehouse can be broken onto, you should use property tags.

 What kind of assets require property tags?

Not all assets require property tags. Assets such as consumables should not be tagged as doing so will be a waste of the company’s resources. Furthermore, assets with a limited shelf life should not also be tagged. These two factors should be considered when deciding on property tags.

 What are some common property tags?

Some common property tags in use are:

Barcodes: Widely used by public and private entities, Barcodes are categorized into Code 128 and Code 39.

RFID: RFID has become increasingly popular and more accessible with recent cost reductions.

QR Codes: They have the capability to retain a lot of data and can be scanned using a smartphone camera.

GPS: GPS is among the oldest tracking technology in use and also one of the most advanced. It enables users to read data about assets at specific locations in real-time.

Asset tagging is very important for organisations planning to manage large volumes of business equipment in an efficient way. Companies can acquire different types of assets to facilitate their daily operations.

Different tools and equipment get circulated within various departments or even across different locations. This increases the risk that comes with misplacement, loss and theft. To reduce administrative overheads, companies have to track their assets carefully. The best way to do this is to label all the tools and equipment with asset tags and ensure they follow asset tagging best practices from the get-go.

Asset tags are basically adhesive labels that can be attached on equipment for better inventory control and easy asset identification. They contain unique asset codes or serial numbers that give specific details about the location, group or any other element of the asset. Today, two of the most popular asset identification methods are RFID and using Barcode labels.

Organisations can use barcode label asset tags to quickly and easily identify inventory across the whole organisation or in the entire supply chain. Barcodes are assigned a unique identification number or symbol which can only be scanned using an asset tracking software solution found in handheld scanners or mobile devices. Some barcode label software can even include maintenance schedules, warranty information, maintenance history for assets, and so much more.

Even though organisations use labels that scan and produce additional information about the item in question, they still require to come up with a proper asset tagging solution. Any company that uses asset tags for asset identification needs a clearly defined and efficient process that manages the assets. By tagging and monitoring assets throughout their lifecycle, they can plan and execute inventory control and ultimately business performance.

Asset Tagging Best Practices

Labelling assets is not an easy task. There are many elements at play such as the type of assets you want to label, the conditions the asset tag has to go through and the data one has to include in the label. Here are some asset tagging best practices that organisations should embrace: 

Pick item IDs with care

If your employees tend to travel a lot with tools and machines, your organisation should learn to implement an asset labelling routine that incorporates the location, item, and department code within the item ID or AIN itself. To increase efficiency, one can assign different codes to different locations, such as TX for the branch in Texas. If you were to implement this, each device category can have its own specific code.

For instance, if you can input L00 for laptops, then choose a specific set of numbers to distinguish different departments, such as 100 for IT. The result showcasing a certain laptop from the IT department in Texas could be identified as TXL00100. This effectively enables one to know all the important details of an item right from the item ID.

Including Procurement Details

For high-maintenance assets, it is essential to record the year of purchase right on the asset label. This makes eases depreciation and maintenance management so that new items undergoing maintenance can be quickly identified for more exclusive examination. It also makes it easier to identify an item that is almost completing its useful life, therefore, no extra costs should be spent for its upgrade.

Use Color-Coded Tags

Companies that have new projects every season can find it hard to maintain different packing lists and have straight custody records. Regular businesses might get confused in differentiating assets from different departments, or assets that look similar but encompass different properties. To make it easier for you, colour coding makes asset identification seamless. For example, if you have the same HP laptops but one with 4GB RAM and the other with 8GB RAM, you can use different for either.

Customize Data

Depending on the assets you have, you can record specific data to have a database that actually provides worthy insights. For instance, barcode labels can entail the manufacturer’s name, serial number and tracking number, including information on which project the asset is tied to. This makes it easier for employees to access detailed information of a certain item, and gather reports to improve future operations.

How Asset Tagging Improves Efficiency

Asset tagging can be very complicated if one starts off wrongly. Having an outline of your organisation’s assets in place can simplify asset tagging and support efficient lifecycle management. Firstly, one can choose the right labelling strategy by having a good understanding of your business goals and objectives. Ultimately, it will seamlessly encourage better efficiencies according to your operations. One can lower costs, improve equipment ROIs, and forego the risk of asset loss, theft and misplacement.

Barcodes

Barcodes are traditionally described as a “manner of storing printed numbers for computers to read.It would, however, be more accurate to say that barcodes store printed information on a barcode label so that computers can read it.The first barcodes represented numbers using bars – lines written at various widths and spaced at multiple distances from each other.Barcodes went mainstream when supermarkets started to use it at checkout points. Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum became the first product in the world sold with a barcode on June 26^th, 1974.

1D (Linear) Barcodes

These first barcodes were one-dimensional barcodes that were machine-readable and contained encoded information.Those used in supermarkets are so-called European Article Numbers (EAN), which is a standard used for 1D barcodes.The so-called EAN-13 is typically found on retail products, and display lines of various widths at variable distances apart, with a row of readable numbers below each string.

A great variety of barcodes quickly developed, all with different symbologies. The term symbology refers to the mapping between messages and includes the encoding of the encoding into bars and spaces, the size of the start and stop markers, and the size of the quiet zone before and after the barcode.

1D Barcode Types

CODE 39

Code 39 defines 43 characters that include uppercase letters A to Z, numeric digits from one to nine, and some special characters.The most significant disadvantage of code 39 is its low data density. It requires substantial space to encode data, which makes it useless for tiny goods. Many postal services still use it, and most barcode readers can decode it. It is still used widely in the defense industry.

CODE 128

A code 128 barcode has these sections:

• Quiet Zone I – This is a mandatory space at the left and right of the 128 bar code and is of fixed width.
• Start Character – The start and stop symbols are always followed by a 2-unit bar, which then forms a 13-unit long stop pattern.
• Data Sequence
• Checksum – The checksum is used and required in a code 128 barcode to verify the correctness of the data represented, especially during transmission or The whole unit of data can be checked and verified by a single number, which is the checksum. If the checksum is incorrect, errors have occurred.
• Stop Character
• Quiet Zone II – A code 128 barcode is much denser than a code 39 barcode, and it stores a much more considerable amount of data on a small label, making it suitable for use in shipping and supply chain management. It uses a short alpha-numeric code that fits a tiny label.  

2D BARCODES

Two-dimensional barcodes can store more information than One Dimensional (1D) barcodes because they store information both vertically and horizontally.

A 2D Barcode can store approximately 350 times more information than a 1D barcode. 2D Barcodes store info in geometric patterns containing squares, hexagons, rectangles, and many other forms that can all be scanned and deciphered by computers.

2D Barcodes make it possible to store and display a great deal of information that remains readable even when printed directly onto the surface of products or packaging or tiny printed labels. This results in fast access to information. Also, 2D barcodes allow the encoding of URLs, which enables barcode readers to access a lot more information by going to the indicated websites.This ability to link to the internet makes 2D barcodes very popular as a tool for mobile users. Mobile phones are equipped with 2D scanners or with the ability to download 2D scanner and reader applications. One well-known app, Whatsapp, for example, comes with an inbuilt 2D scanner. There are many competing 2D barcodes, including QR Codes, Data Matrix Codes, and many more. 

DATA MATRIX

A data matrix is a two-dimensional code of black and white dots arranged in a pattern that contains encoded information, albeit text or numeric data of up to 1556 bytes initially, but now it can encode up to 3,116 characters from the ASCII set, all depending on the number of cells in the matrix. Typically data matrix is suitable for tiny objects.

Around the edges of the symbol, it contains a finder pattern that allows scanners to read the profile regardless of the reader’s angle. It includes an error correction (checksum) encoding that survives damage to the barcode, physically. Data matrix is prevalent in the USA and Europe in parts manufacturing and aerospace industries, electronics, and automotive manufacturing.It is also suitable for use in logistics and document management, the postal sector, and healthcare.

Data matrix codes are read with imagers and camera based-instruments that read a geometric area rather than a specific line for data.Laser scanners cannot read the data matrix code.

QR CODE

QR codes, shorthand for Quick Response code, is a 2D matrix barcode that originates in Japan, where it was developed for tracking automotive parts in factories.

QR codes contain a tracker or locator that leads to the URL of either a website or an application, using numeric, alphanumeric binary and kanji to store information.It can be scanned very quickly, and this made it very popular for many other purposes outside the automotive industry.It is, therefore, handy for product tracking, time tracking, and general marketing.

Physically a QR code is printed on a white background in a square grid that contains black squares, which can be read by camera-like instruments. It includes a unique error-identification system that is known as the Reed-Solomon error correction system that ensures the appropriate interpretation of the image.

QR codes came into its rightful position as the primary application used to bridge the gap between the digital and the real world.It can encode 2,509 numeric or 1.520 alphanumeric characters with various levels of error-detection. Today QR codes are found on most things around us, partly because it is universally supported by open-source software. 

Barcode Scanners

Barcode scanners today are incredibly accurate and relatively inexpensive.  According to available data, scanners err with as few as one substitution error for every 36 trillion characters entered, depending on the type of barcode used, of course. 

More Barcode Benefits

• It can be used to profile consumers through the use of voluntary registration cards
• Information about a shipment can be transmitted using an Electronic Data Interchange to the client before the purchase even arrives at its destination
• Deliveries can be tracked from sender to final destination
• Changes in price can be updated on the computer, so the cashier does not have to know or keep up with the changes.
• Data from machines can be stored using barcodes.
• It can be used to identify and keep track of patients in hospitals while assisting medical practitioners in tracking their individual medical histories.
• It can be used as boarding passes by airlines instead of tickets
• Can be used instead of tickets at events