In 2009, EDF Tricastin launches a project for the setting up of fire equipment management solution by RFID to facilitate the inventory, improve and optimize the traceability of regulatory inspections.
Automate the Management and Control of Fire Equipment with RFID
The main objective of EDF Tricastin is to improve the traceability and guarantee the maintenance of fire equipment.
Indeed, a poor management of fire equipment (equipment missing, defective or expiration dates exceeded) may have important consequences in case of incident. Therefore, fire equipment should always be available, in a perfect operating condition at all times.
However, the daily management of fire equipment is made manually through spreadsheet files to determine the level of the different stocks, the location of equipment, monitoring of regulatory controls, etc. This manual update, usually source of errors and time consuming, do not allow to guarantee the reliability and the accuracy of the information contained in this spreadsheet.
Seeking for a management and traceability solution using RFID technology, EDF Tricastin wants to guarantee and ensure the condition of fire equipment at any time : real-time inventory, automatic tracking of regulatory controls, geolocation of equipment, etc. This solution aims to ensure the availability and the proper functioning of equipment in case of incident.
EDF Tricastin chose NexCap® Mobile Assets Tracking solution by Nexess, to carry out the monitoring of its fire equipment (extinguishers, SCBA) with RFID. Nexess has an extensive experience of the traceability of sensitive material with RFID in many industries : Nuclear, Oil & Gas, Aerospace, etc.
Fire managers can also perform regulatory controls of maintenance (annual control, qualification) and random controls (visual inspection).
Equipped with RFID mobile reader, they can for example, control the status of each extinguisher, its location and compliance.
Information entered on the RFID PDA allow to update automatically and instantly the material properties of each extinguisher. Moreover, in case of non-compliance (extinguisher damaged, pin missing, etc.), technicians have the opportunity to take picture of damaged equipment and save it.
All data of movements traceability, controls, inventories and loggings are then remotely available with the NexCap® Web application.
Download the case study : Management of Extinguishers and SCBA equipment by RFID
