PDA + RFID

We were hearing feedback from the field that plant consolidations, early retirements and downsizing initiatives were creating, among other things, spikes in unscheduled downtime due to improper or no disciplined lubrication programs.

One thing we heard over and over as a root cause was the challenge of taking a new employee and turning him into a high-performer relative to doing the right kind of maintence on the right kind of equipment at the right kind of interval with the right kind of lubricant.

Rice partnered with one of our industrial clients and developed a system for a seasoned employee to make his life easier and a new employee to ramp-up sooner . The system uses a handheld (PDA: personal digital assistant) with scanner and RFID (radio frequecy identificatiion) tags.

Wave the handhelp at the RFID tag on the machine and it tells the operator, oiler or whomever exactly how to lubricate/service that specific machine.