Equipment tracking with IoT devices
From a 20-line requirements list to an RFID business case with over €500K in identified annual savings.
Business request
The client sent an Excel file with about 20 high-level requirements. Their equipment management system covered orders, planning and depot allocation, but visibility stopped when equipment left the depot. They could not see what was delivered, returned, damaged or missing. They asked me to extend the system to close that gap.
Challenges
The requirements described a solution. They did not describe the problem.
Inventory was counted by hand twice a year and typed into Excel. This produced a discrepancy of around 7% and consumed roughly 400 person-days per year.
After shipment, the client often could not prove what had been delivered versus what came back. They could not bill for missing or damaged equipment and absorbed the loss.
The business case had to hold up with leadership, so hardware cost and feasibility could not rest on vendor assumptions.
Delivered solution
I did not start from the requirements list. A first workshop with IT and the business process manager, about 90 minutes, showed that the real problem was a structural lack of asset visibility. I reworked the 20 requirements into a discovery backlog covering business problems, user needs, edge cases and operational scenarios.
The solution is an RFID-based asset management platform: passive tags on individual units, RFID gates at depot entrances and exits, and handheld readers for warehouse and field staff. The unit economics are simple. A piece of equipment is worth around €20 or more, and a tag costs about €0.10.
I redesigned the processes end to end: dispatch through the gate, delivery confirmation on site, damage and loss reporting during use, and automatic updates on return. Each asset also gets a digital history (activation, deployments, maintenance), which supports replacement planning based on age and utilisation.
Before finalising the business case, I sourced an RFID supplier in China, ordered samples and tested the use case with the technical team. I built clickable Figma prototypes for the warehouse and field mobile app and for the back-office web app, based on defined personas and user journeys.
I presented the business case to business management, IT leadership and operations. It included a phased roadmap: discovery and design (2-3 months), a pilot at one depot (3-6 months), and scale-out across all depots (12-18 months).
Tech stack Passive RFID tags, RFID gates, handheld readers, integration with the client’s existing equipment management system, Figma for prototypes.
Outcome
The business case identified over €500K in annual savings. The sources are the recovered 400 person-days of manual counting, a lower inventory discrepancy and safety-stock buffer, and revenue recovered from equipment that could not be billed. The hardware assumptions were tested on physical samples before the case went to leadership. My engagement covered discovery through roadmap and prototype.
€500K+
annual savings identified
400
person-days of manual counting per year
~7%
inventory discrepancy before
Lessons learned
A requirements list often describes a solution someone has already chosen. One structured workshop was enough to show it did not match the problem.
Quantify the problem in person-days, percentages and unit costs. That is what leadership can act on.
Test the hardware before the business case, not after.
Propose a pilot at one site before a full rollout. It reduces risk and makes approval easier.