Warwickshire College is a major further and higher education institution in the Midlands, operating across more than six centres and supporting approximately 1,700 staff and 18,500 students.
Its distributed technology estate includes equipment used by administrative staff and students, as well as audiovisual equipment. An additional 1,200 student PCs increased the scale of the physical inventory challenge.
Challenge: Auditing IT Assets Across Multiple Locations
Warwickshire College needed to audit IT equipment used by administrative staff and students across more than six education centres. Its estate also included audiovisual equipment supporting technology-enabled learning environments.
The College’s existing audit process relied on printed barcode labels. Staff checked equipment individually and manually transcribed serial numbers into spreadsheets to record what equipment was held at each location.
For a distributed and growing device estate, this process was time-consuming and prone to transcription errors. Updating the asset inventory required staff to locate each item, access its barcode and enter the information manually.
Warwickshire therefore needed a more efficient way to:
- Identify IT and audiovisual equipment during physical audits
- Reduce manual barcode transcription
- Update inventory records across multiple locations
- Improve the reliability of the information collected during each audit
Solution: RFID Labels for Multi-Site IT Asset Audits
Warwickshire College decided to introduce RFID labeling to improve the identification and control of IT assets across its different locations. The College worked with CoreRFID on the selection and implementation of the RFID solution.
“RFID is an ideal tool to help us control assets across our many locations. CoreRFID had been an ideal technology partner, helping us in both selection and implementation.” - Paul Maddock, Warwickshire College
Xerafy Metal Skin® printable on-metal RFID labels were selected for the IT equipment.
Unlike a printed barcode that must be individually located and scanned, an RFID label can be detected without direct line of sight. This gave Warwickshire a more practical method for identifying equipment during physical inventory audits across its distributed estate.
Metal Skin labels are designed to maintain UHF RFID performance when applied to metal and metalized surfaces commonly found on laptops and other electronic equipment. Their printable surface can also carry visible asset information and a barcode where both identification methods are required.
Selected Approach
- RFID-based physical identification for IT and audiovisual equipment
- Xerafy Metal Skin® printable on-metal RFID labels
- CoreRFID support for technology selection and implementation
- A more efficient alternative to individually reading and transcribing printed barcodes
Xerafy is a pioneer in Industrial RFID, bringing to market several innovations that enable advanced industrial identification and automation capabilities.
In addition to a complete range of field-proven RFID tags available off-the-shelf, Xerafy offers Custom RFID Tags services, covering everything from a personalization service bureau to custom-design engineering capabilities.
