Fire hazards pose a potent threat to every business. Businesses realize this and spend a substantial amount of money to acquire fire assets such as fire hydrant systems, fire hose pool systems, fire alarms, and automatic fire sprinkler systems.
Businesses can’t just acquire these assets and forget them. Fire assets are subject to wear and tear regularly. They say a stitch in time saves nine. To get the most out of these assets, businesses need to come up with a maintenance plan.
Businesses own several fire assets. Remembering the maintenance schedule of every asset is not possible even for expert asset managers. Implementing an asset management tracking system can help address this problem. Asset tracking systems combine software barcode scanner, barcode asset tags, and mobile devices to streamline asset tracking. Every system has a maintenance function that helps track equipment maintenance.
In this article...
A step-by-step approach to tagging your assets
First things first, you need to understand that the ability of your asset tagging software to help you track maintenance will depend on how accurately you set the system up. Any errors while tagging your assets, can undermine your system’s capabilities. Follow these steps to accurately tag your assets:
Categorize your fire assets by department, cost, use, or any other variable that you deem fit. Use a method that aligns with the processes you use to categorize your assets for accounting purposes.
- Assign a unique identification number to every fire asset.
- Decide the type of asset labels to be used.
- Enter data related to your assets such as status, asset value, asset identification number, and date of acquisition into the system.
- Attach asset tags to your fire assets. Before starting to apply asset identification tags on the surface of your fire assets, determine the best attachment method (using pressure-sensitive adhesives vs. mechanical attachments).
- Set data verification processes in place.
Answering the million-dollar question: How do asset tracking systems help with maintenance?
A fixed asset management system is designed to help your team avoid costly errors. A web based asset tracking software collects data round the clock. It uses inspection data to schedule maintenance events.
An asset tagging software will help your team design a preventive maintenance schedule that focuses on nipping repair issues in the bud. An asset tracking software also lets users set reminders, helping them ensure that they never miss a maintenance schedule. Timely maintenance helps avoid emergency repairs, increase asset longevity, and keep downtime to a minimum.
An asset tagging software can help you confidently answer these questions:
- When was the last time the asset was maintained?
- When is the maintenance on the asset due in the future?
- What are the steps that the asset maintenance team must take to perform a specific maintenance action?
- Are your team members following the right asset maintenance procedures?
Maintenance function in asset management software: How does it work
Once you have scanned your fire assets to set up your asset management tracking system, it will start tracking them. The system will record the change in the status of assets and information, such as the maintenance performed on them every time they are scanned.
Your system will allow you to define a specific workflow that your team members must follow to perform maintenance on each type of asset. You can track the maintenance status of your assets as:
- Requires maintenance
- In maintenance
- Damaged
- Ready for use
You can view reports of maintenance performed on your fire assets or go through the maintenance record of a particular asset. Based on your findings, you can fix a date for the next maintenance event. You can also set up a schedule for periodic maintenance for a particular category of assets. When an asset is being repaired, block it for use.
Tracking fire asset maintenance: What else can you do?
Generate reports on maintenance events
Modern asset management software come loaded with features. They can generate different reports related to upcoming maintenance events and a history of maintenance performed. An asset tagging software allows users to choose to generate reports on recurring, scheduled, one-time, and performed maintenance events.
You can also choose to generate after-action reports that will help you find out when maintenance was performed, who performed the event, and how much did the event cost the business. These reports will provide insights into asset maintenance, giving you greater control and helping you save money.
Perform maintenance that has not been scheduled
The maintenance feature of many asset tagging software allow users to perform maintenance events that have not been scheduled or are pre-scheduled. Many systems feature different alternatives that allow users to include work/part costs and upload pictures of the asset maintained to provide a complete audit trail.