What is QR Code and Its Benefits

Maintaining equipment manually often leads to mismanagement, causing damaged or missing equipment. Innovative equipment management solutions have resolved this problem using QR codes. Let’s learn more about QR codes and how they can benefit your equipment management system.

Equipment and asset management is a challenging and time-consuming aspect of any business. You have to maintain spreadsheets, fill out paperwork, and monitor equipment manually. This often leads to confusion and mismanagement, causing damaged or missing equipment. Fortunately, innovative equipment management solutions have resolved this problem using QR codes. Now, you and your team can easily use the mobile app to scan QR codes on your equipment and update the data instantly and accurately. This provides you with a complete usage audit trail.

What are QR Codes?

A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode readable optically, for example, with a mobile phone camera. This code can contain data like product descriptions, vCards, or website URLs. You can easily attach the unique barcode to equipment, products, machines, or other assets that you need to track and maintain. Once you scan the bar code attached to the item, you can pull all the related information about it. The QR Code appears as a group of black dots arranged on a white background in a square grid shape. 

QR codes were invented during the mid-90s, originally for use in the automobile manufacturing industry. They were used for tracking the parts of vehicles during the process of manufacturing. With time, people realized the benefits of QR Codes, and more industries started integrating them into their equipment and asset management processes. 

Today, QR Codes are used in various industries for numerous applications, including inventory tracking, products distribution, checking, etc. Nowadays, QR codes are even used in stores to provide special discount coupons to customers or know more about the product. There are different simple and quick ways to generate QR codes for your use. You can use various applications to transform information into QR codes and utilize them for your purpose. 

How do QR Codes work?

QR code is an optically readable code that can be scanned to obtain information. It works in a similar way as a bar code to get information about the product or item in stock. It is a machine-readable and scannable image instantly readable with the help of a smartphone camera; however, you may need to download the app to read the QR code with your smartphone. After scanning the code, you get information in an easy-to-understand format. It gives you quick and efficient access to information stored in its code. 

How Can QR Code Benefit Equipment Management?

While using QR codes for equipment management helps you boost your ROI, they offer several other practical benefits that you can observe in your routine business operations. 

Speed Up Your Asset Identification Processes 

Using QR codes for asset identification helps to speed up the processes. You can quickly track the equipment and tools by simply scanning QR codes without the hassle of paperwork. With the help of QR Codes, you can easily identify products in your inventory and update their record. It means you no longer need to involve yourself in the time-consuming and tedious manual task of opening a spreadsheet, finding the asset, and updating its details. This gives you equipment visibility in real-time. 

Increase Efficiency and Productivity 

QR codes allow you to quickly scan codes and assign equipment within seconds. To start their work, your team members no longer need to approach the equipment manager, sign the documents, enter the details, etc. The swift process of equipment checkout with QR codes allows your team to jumpstart their day without delays. This helps maximize your team’s efficiency and productivity.

Cost-Effective 

Implementing a QR Codes system for equipment management saves your time and your money. You don't need to invest in expensive equipment tracking and management software. You can simply generate QR codes or labels using free tools or software, and your team can scan the codes with their tablet or mobile devices. This not just fits into any budget, but your team members can adapt to it easily as well. Even those who are not tech-savvy can easily scan the QR code with their mobile phones. 

Improve Transparency and Accountability 

Visibility of equipment for fleet managers is a major challenge that relies heavily on paper processing. It's not possible to hold anyone responsible for damaged or lost equipment or inventory without an accurate tracking system in place. By implementing QR codes, you can accomplish the desired level of transparency in the monitoring system. QR codes for equipment management empower operators to track and monitor equipment proactively. They can use software for assigning equipment to themselves, creating a system of accountability. 

Enhance Safety of Your Equipment 

When sharing your working site or warehouse with another company, there is a chance of your equipment or inventory getting mixed up. There won't be any mix-ups when you have QR codes attached to all your equipment because you can scan the code to know if the equipment is yours. This practice also serves as a theft deterrent. 

Eliminate Communication Barriers 

The more information you have about your equipment, the better you'll be able to manage it. QR Codes enable you to stay updated with the status of your equipment no matter where it is. Using equipment management software, your equipment operators can scan equipment and update the information through their mobile devices. This helps you stay informed about any issue, and you get notifications regarding each item, eliminating communication barriers. 

In a nutshell, the use of QR codes for equipment management is undoubtedly the most efficient way to track and manage your equipment or inventory in real-time. You can keep a close check on your equipment usage by attaching QR codes. Users can scan these codes to use equipment, removing the hassle of manual check-in and checkout, increasing productivity and accountability.

BONUS!
Here is a video (external) showing how to create QR codes for free, using Google Sheets: