Tracking Infrastructure

Over the past two and a half years about 80 precast and prestressed concrete manufacturers have subscribed to the Idencia concrete tracking system to improve inventory control and implement paperless QC processes. As they have integrated Idencia into their operations, they have developed some great ideas for improvements based on their user experiences. We welcome this input because our customers often come up with suggestions that may never have occurred to us. Every once in a while we like to report the new features that have been developed from these ideas.

Texas is rapidly becoming one of the most active states in using RFID tracking for managing production and inventory control of precast concrete. Why?

For one reason, precast and prestressed concrete producers selling to TX DOT are required to produce production and quality assurance records known as PC-2 and PC-7 reports (for prestressed and precast producers, respectively). These are very detailed reports that concrete tracking systems prepare automatically, saving a lot of administrative time.

At its essence, a lean manufacturing practice is the continual pursuit of more efficient ways to operate. Ideas are contributed by all involved in any process; they are tested for effectiveness; and the winners become standardized in the workflow. These standardized practices are reduced to their simplest elements and visual cues are placed throughout the plant to optimize integration and efficiency. RFID tracking is a natural tool for supporting the implementation of lean manufacturing practices at precast concrete plants. Here's why.

The precast concrete industry has embraced RFID tracking for its benefits of paperless QC, real-time inventory reporting and productivity management. Now construction contractors are starting to demand product tracking for their own benefit. With web hosting, the producer, contractor and project owner can easily create and share a timeline history of every product in each project. Our conversations with contractors reveal a few common themes about the productivity they see from the practice.

We heard a story recently from a large precast manufacturer that expects to produce a windfall of multiple millions of dollars by initiating a change that is available to any concrete producer. This 'found money' has nothing to do with growing sales. No change in price; no change in collections processes. In fact, it has nothing to do with changing anything external to the company. It will be produced by making a very simple internal change.

Given the engineering-intensive nature of manufacturing prestressed concrete structures... and the high degree of documentation required to maintain quality control records... anything that helps manage paperwork provides a natural benefit to the industry. Prestressed concrete manufacturers have taken a page from the retail industry and are starting to adopt bar code tracking to do this.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a construction video of the new Seattle tunnel project is incalculable. The project, known locally as the SR 99 tunnel, is replacing the above-ground Alaskan Way trestle with a tunnel that will run underneath the city. The video below shows how the contractors are boring the tunnel and installing the concrete rings that line it. An engineering marvel!

Based on our experience in just the first quarter, 2016 will likely be viewed in retrospect as a tipping point for precast product tracking. Why? Our prospects are now starting to deliver a vision that is beyond our own original view.

Our original view held that the value of using a precast RFID tracking system is centered in two dimensions:

1. Cost efficiency of replacing paper with tablets, and
2. Customer value produced from delivering information with the product. 

Prospects are now suggesting to us that RFID tracking can deliver value in a third dimension: Construction productivity.

The first concern of many companies considering a move to paperless QC or electronic inventory management from paper records is that their information will be at greater risk of loss. In fact, the opposite is true. We've written previously about precast RFID tracking as a means of competitive advantage (How Customer Value is Created With Infrastructure Product Tracking) and as a manufacturing productivity solution (Inventory Control, Farewell Frustration). In this post we will show you why digital product tracking is actually a safer practice than using paper.

It goes without saying that railroads want their vendors to be as efficient as possible. New industry practices now indicate that vendors may need to engage in lean practices to sustain their customer relationships. As railroads work to improve their own maintenance efficiency and... more important... ensure track safety, they are asking vendors to provide batch mix information about each concrete tie they deliver. They are also starting to track weld information on rails and production information about switches. Lean manufacturing is about minimizing waste and enhancing customer value. A railroad vendor that embraces this practice will view these demands as a market opportunity that can be addressed more easily than they might expect.