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On April 2, 2007, Stafford Tower, an American construction crane rental company, began to use RFID systems to track the company’s cranes and their large components across the United States. The U.S. branch of Stafford Tower Crane Company in Dublin, Ireland has attached active RFID tags to 15 cranes and their components, and can collect the location data of these materials at any time. The system uses AssetPulse software and integrated services. AssetPulse is a company in California that provides asset tracking software.
Stafford Tower leases cranes to construction sites across the United States and is in desperate need of a system that can help it quickly locate crane components. Six months ago, when the RFID system was not in use, Stafford used pen and paper to track and manage cranes and many parts up to 20 feet long. Stafford’s president and corporate legal person Patrick Stafford said: “That’s really a headache!”
If the construction site rents a crane first, and then rents the tower of the increased crane, the situation will be very troublesome: many parts customers will order several times, usually 3 to 5 times by sea, or more. When all the parts are transported to the construction site and the crane is raised, the construction site needs to be prepared. If the parts are lost, the entire construction project has to be postponed. Patrick said: “We must keep track of the location of each component and try our best to avoid this kind of delay.”
A crane costs 700,000 US dollars, and the components of the crane are as high as 17,000 US dollars, while renting a complete set of equipment requires 25,000 US dollars per month. In order to avoid economic losses to the company due to the loss of components, Stafford is determined to track the location of each crane and its components at any time and accurately.
Stafford gradually expands the AssetPulse system in two stages. The first step is to attach an RFID tag with an ID number to each part of the crane and read it into the RFID reader. This reader weighs 7 pounds and can be carried by Stafford staff. The RFID tag used by the system is an active 433.92MHz radio frequency tag. Depending on the size of the reader’s antenna, the tag can be read within a range of 300-2500 feet.
With this reader, the staff can immediately judge whether the crane parts are complete in the construction work. The reader is wirelessly connected with the laptop on the construction site, and connected with the AssetPulse software server on the Internet through the laptop’s GPRS. Stafford or their customers can search for the specific location of a particular crane or its parts via the Internet at any time.
The second stage of development was in the second quarter of 2007. At that time, the cab of each crane will be equipped with RFID readers, and the data will be directly connected to the Internet through GPRS, so the staff no longer need to carry RFID readers with them. . Each crane has a GPS unit to accurately locate the crane and its various components in a large construction site. AssetPulse’s asset tracking software supports RFID or barcode readers, Sarathy said, to the extent that there is no need for human intervention.
Stafford Tower Crane Company hopes that their customers will also use this RFID system to manage expensive assets such as generators on construction sites. Stafford said: Stafford Tower’s Irish branch will also use this system to implement asset management.
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