Assets and equipment

The problem

Equipment outlives the paperwork that describes it. A pump, a lifting accessory, a fire door, a laptop, a compressor: each acquires a history of inspections, services, repairs and owners, and that history lives in a spreadsheet, a maintenance system, a filing cabinet and an engineer’s memory, none of which are attached to the object.

So the object arrives at the next inspection with no reliable account of itself. Asset registers drift out of date the moment equipment moves. Inspection records are trusted because the person filing them says so. And when something fails, reconstructing what was done to it, when, and by whom is an exercise in archaeology.

How VCode is deployed

A code is applied to the asset itself and carries its record through the lifecycle: register, deploy, inspect, maintain, repair, transfer, retire.

• Per-asset identity, readable down to about 5 mm, which matters on components, fittings and tools where a large label will not fit or will not survive.
• Different answers per audience. An operator gets the safe-use information; an engineer gets the service history; an auditor gets the inspection record.
• Location rules, so an asset scanned outside its assigned site reports as such.
• Time windows, so an inspection interval expiring changes what the code says about the asset.

What happens when it is scanned

The scan identifies that individual asset and returns its current position according to the record, not according to the sticker. An engineer scanning before work sees the history and adds to it as an identified party, which is the difference between a maintenance record and a maintenance claim.

The case that sells it is the overdue inspection. The asset is physically unchanged and its label is unchanged. From the moment the interval lapses the code reports that it is out of inspection, to whoever scans it, including the operator about to use it. Nobody has to have checked a register.

Why a QR code or NFC alone is not enough

Asset tagging with serialised QR codes is common, works, and is cheap. If your requirement is to look up an asset in your own system, that is a sound answer and this page is not arguing against it.

Two things it does not do. The code is a lookup key into a system the scanner must already have access to, so a contractor, an auditor or a customer gets nothing. And it cannot vary its answer, so an operator and an engineer see the same thing or nothing.

NFC and RFID both do well on industrial assets, particularly where the tag must survive weather, wash-down or paint, and RFID is unmatched if you want to inventory a store room by walking through it. The trade is cost per asset and reader availability in the field.

Why it reads in the field

Assets are the hardest read of the lot. A plate is weathered, painted over, mounted at an angle in a plant room, or the component is too small for a label at all.

At about 5 mm, and 100 microns with an assisted scan, the mark fits components and fittings. Around 30 per cent damage tolerance handles a plate that has spent three winters outside, and up to 170 degrees handles an engineer scanning from wherever they can physically reach.

What it changes commercially

• The register stops drifting. Location and custody update when the asset is actually handled.
• Inspection compliance is enforced at the point of use, not at audit.
• Service history follows the asset through transfer, resale and disposal.
• Third parties can be given exactly what they need, and nothing else.

Integration

Codes are minted per asset through the platform API from your existing asset or maintenance system, applied by whatever marking the environment allows, and scanned through your own application via the SDK so engineers stay in the tool they already use. Scan history is the lifecycle record. See the developer documentation.