A modular conveyor belt manufacturer replaced manual spreadsheet tracking with a company-wide QR-code asset system — and used it to modernize tool requests and maintenance documentation along the way.
Customer case study | GoCodes Asset Tracking
In this article...
Project at a Glance
| Company | Intralox |
|---|---|
| Industry | Manufacturing (modular plastic belt conveyors) |
| Assets tracked | 7,000+ tools and pieces of equipment |
| Locations | Headquarters in Harahan, Louisiana, plus plants across the US and in Amsterdam, Japan, China, Australia, the UK, and Brazil — nine plants in total |
| Users | Two primary administrators managing day-to-day tracking, with report and catalog access extended to plant managers globally |
| Technology | GoCodes Asset Tracking QR-code asset tracking, plus a custom-built documentation link and a companion self-service request catalog |
| Implementation timeline | Company-wide asset tagging completed over several months, with GoCodes Asset Tracking going live company-wide in March 2023 |
| Results | An estimated 30-40% of the tracking team’s time freed for higher-value work, a dramatic improvement in inventory accuracy Paul describes as “100% more accurate,” and estimated savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on inventory replenishment |
Introduction
Intralox, a global manufacturer of modular plastic belt conveyors, tracked 7,000+ tools across nine plants in Excel before adopting GoCodes Asset Tracking. What began as a project to bring one department’s tool inventory into a proper database grew into something larger: a company-wide QR-code system, a self-service request catalog built around it, and a custom feature that turned every tagged tool into an instant source of maintenance documentation for technicians on the floor.
GoCodes Asset Tracking is a cloud-based asset tracking software that utilizes patented QR codes to track equipment across locations.
The Client
Intralox designs and manufactures modular plastic belt conveyors used across a wide range of industries, with its headquarters in Harahan, Louisiana. The company supplies tools and equipment not only to its US operations but globally, to assembly plants in Amsterdam, Japan, China, Australia, the UK, and Brazil, among others — nine plants in total.
Within Intralox, the Manufacturing Engineering Group (MEG) — made up of mechanical, electrical, controls, and industrial engineers — designs tooling for Intralox’s product lines and manages the equipment used to build and maintain it, whether built in-house or produced by an outside vendor. That equipment ranges from ordinary hand tools to large pieces of custom-built production equipment, and it moves constantly between Intralox’s manufacturing engineering group and assembly plants around the world.
The Challenge
Two members of the Manufacturing Engineering Group were responsible for tracking all of that equipment — more than 7,000 tools in total — using Excel spreadsheets, supplemented by a SharePoint web form and email for incoming requests. It worked, but it demanded constant manual upkeep: entering and re-entering data, triaging requests from multiple channels, and reconciling spreadsheets that, as an inevitable result of manual entry, sometimes held incomplete or conflicting information.
The team eventually raised their hand and asked for help. As Paul, an industrial engineer at Intralox who led the search for a better solution, put it, the real problem was the tool: “Spreadsheets are wonderful — I love Excel — but it’s not really a database.”
Without a database behind the process, Intralox had no reliable way to confirm on-hand inventory before ordering replacements, no standard way to refer to the same tool across different locations, and no easy way to hand accounting an accurate, up-to-date record of costs and shipments.
Focus
Paul, an industrial engineer in Intralox’s Manufacturing Engineering Group with a background as an SAP super-user, worked alongside the team to identify a solution, examining their process in detail — how requests came in, accounting’s reporting needs, and where the manual work was heaviest — before defining what a replacement system would need to do.
The clearest requirement was a genuine database in place of spreadsheets. Just as important, though, was that it be easy to use by the team, neither of whom worked in Intralox’s Oracle ERP system. Intralox chose a dedicated, easy-to-adopt asset tracking application over extending Oracle to cover tool tracking, avoiding unnecessary training and complexity. After thorough investigation by the team, they found that GoCodes Asset Tracking “checked the majority of those boxes for us.”
Prior to Utilizing GoCodes Asset Tracking
- All 7,000+ tools and pieces of equipment were tracked manually in Excel spreadsheets, maintained by two team members
- Manual data entry led to recurring rework and some spreadsheet inaccuracies
- Incoming tool requests arrived through a mix of a SharePoint web form and email, requiring manual triage
- No standardized naming convention — the same tool could be referred to differently at different locations
- Reports for accounting were compiled by hand, then shared on request
- Maintenance technicians had to physically retrieve a tool, carry it back to the office, and manually search a documentation library to find service instructions
- No systematic way to confirm on-hand inventory before purchasing replacements, risking duplicate or unnecessary purchases
The Solution
Ease of use was a deciding factor for the team. Following a GoCodes Asset Tracking demo where the team’s questions were answered, GoCodes Asset Tracking was the clear choice.
Tagging Intralox’s existing inventory was the largest lift. A three-person Intralox team tagged more than 7,000 items over several months, in sessions three times a week, following the same process each time:
- Pull the item from inventory and photograph it
- Apply the QR tag
- Log the item into GoCodes Asset Tracking
Once the core inventory was tagged, Intralox built an addition: a self-service request catalog, modeled on familiar consumer shopping experiences. Intralox’s tool catalog works like McMaster-Carr: search for the item, add it to a cart, and submit the request. “It’s kind of like a McMaster-Carr catalog,” Paul said. The parts already carry the part numbers that tie directly back to on-hand inventory in GoCodes Asset Tracking.
The system also grew in a direction Intralox hadn’t originally planned for. Because every tagged asset could already be scanned to pull up its basic record, the team asked GoCodes Asset Tracking whether the same QR code could also link out to a tool’s drawings and maintenance documentation, stored separately on Intralox’s SharePoint site. GoCodes Asset Tracking built a custom feature linking Intralox’s QR tags to SharePoint maintenance docs, turning a simple asset lookup into a documentation shortcut for maintenance technicians on the shop floor.
Before and After
| Area | Before GoCodes Asset Tracking | After GoCodes Asset Tracking |
|---|---|---|
| Tool tracking | Manually maintained Excel spreadsheets, prone to rework and inaccuracy | Centralized, database-driven tracking of 7,000+ assets in GoCodes Asset Tracking |
| Tool requests | Ad hoc requests by email and SharePoint form, triaged by hand | Self-service catalog tied directly to GoCodes Asset Tracking’ on-hand inventory and part numbers |
| Reporting to accounting | Reports compiled manually and shared on request | Live, shareable report links that generate in seconds |
| Maintenance documentation | Techs retrieve the tool, return to the office, and search a documentation library by hand | Scan the tool’s QR code on the spot to pull up drawings and maintenance instructions instantly |
Results
- GoCodes Asset Tracking freed an estimated 30-40% of Intralox’s tool-tracking team’s time for other value-added work.
- Inventory tracking that’s dramatically more accurate — “100% more accurate,” in Paul’s own words — with full transparency between catalog requests and on-hand inventory
- Intralox estimates GoCodes Asset Tracking saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in replenishment costs, thanks to clearer visibility into what’s already on hand
- Intralox accounting reports, once compiled manually, now generate in seconds as live GoCodes Asset Tracking links instead of one-off requests
- A standardized naming convention for tools, eliminating the confusion of different locations calling the same item by a different name
- A custom QR-linked documentation feature, requested by Intralox and built by GoCodes Asset Tracking, that lets maintenance technicians pull up a tool’s drawings and service instructions with a scan and a click
- A self-service tool request catalog adopted across nine plants worldwide, giving global users an easy, familiar way to order tools without needing direct access to GoCodes Asset Tracking
- Full buy-in from the team who uses GoCodes Asset Tracking every day
Future Outlook
A future opportunity could lie in broadening adoption of GoCodes Asset Tracking’ documentation-lookup feature among Intralox’s overseas maintenance teams, who could possibly still rely on the older, manual process of tracking down documentation after a tool is already in hand. There’s also potential to use GoCodes Asset Tracking to track vendor lead times — the time between placing a purchase order and receiving the item — to start building performance metrics for Intralox’s tool vendors. Longer term, there’s a possibility that Intralox might consider integrating maintenance-compliance tracking, currently handled in a separate legacy system, into GoCodes Asset Tracking too.
FAQ
How many tools and assets does Intralox track in GoCodes Asset Tracking?
Intralox tracks more than 7,000 tools and pieces of equipment, supplied not only to its US operations but globally to assembly plants including Amsterdam, Japan, China, Australia, the UK, and Brazil.
How did Intralox get its team on board with a new system?
The team studied their existing process in detail, investigated several software options including GoCodes Asset Tracking, and prioritized ease of use throughout. After a live demo, they concluded GoCodes Asset Tracking was the best fit for their needs.
What was the biggest unexpected win from implementing GoCodes Asset Tracking?
A custom feature Intralox requested that links each tool’s QR code directly to its drawings and maintenance documentation on SharePoint, letting maintenance technicians pull up service instructions with a scan and a click instead of a manual search.
Would Intralox recommend GoCodes Asset Tracking to other companies?
Yes — Paul’s advice to a prospective customer is to identify their own business need in detail first, then evaluate how GoCodes Asset Tracking’ offering fits it, and think carefully about the range of users, from day-to-day administrators to occasional requesters, who’ll actually touch the system.
