QR, barcode or RFID: what to put on the equipment

For maintenance work in buildings, a QR code is almost always the right answer. It costs pennies, it is read by the phone everybody already has, and anybody can use it without training. Barcodes and RFID each win in a narrower case worth knowing about.

QR codes

Scanned by any phone camera, no special hardware, printable on anything, and readable when partly damaged. The important advantage is that people who are not technicians can use them, which is what makes a code on a wall into a fault reporting point.

• •Best for: equipment, rooms, plant, anything a person walks up to
• •Weak at: reading from a distance, reading many at once, very small items

Barcodes

Cheaper to print at volume and reliable with a dedicated scanner. Still the right answer in a stores environment where somebody is scanning hundreds of items in a shift with a proper gun.

• •Best for: parts, consumables, stores and stock counts
• •Weak at: damage and dirt, and awkward angles

RFID

Read without line of sight, and many at once. That is a genuine superpower for finding portable equipment in a large building, and it is expensive enough that it needs a real reason.

• •Best for: portable equipment that moves and gets lost, and high-volume stock counts
• •Weak at: cost, metal and liquid interference, and needing readers everywhere

The hospital case

Locating hundreds of portable devices for scheduled maintenance is the one facilities problem where RFID pays clearly. When a third of your equipment cannot be found on the day its check is due, the tag cost is smaller than the search cost.

Practical rules for putting them on

• •Put the code where the work happens, not by the plant room door
• •Print on a material that survives cleaning chemicals, steam and sunlight
• •Point the code at the equipment record, never at a process, so changing how you work does not mean reprinting
• •Put one in the back of house of every store, unit or floor, not only in plant areas
• •Keep a second copy of the code in the record, so a destroyed label can be reprinted identically

The mistake to avoid

Encoding information in the code itself, like the asset name or the building. Codes outlive names. Point at a record and let the record hold the facts, or your labels become wrong the first time a building is renamed.