Become an Equipment Management Hero by Solving These Common Problems

As an equipment manager within an enterprise, university, or rental setting can often leave you wondering where your time has gone. Getting equipment ready for colleagues, students, and customers who require it can take a long time, and it sure would be nice to have less stress to deal with. Well, you’re in luck! This is our guide to common equipment management challenges and steps you can take to solve them.

Challenge #1 - Creating a clear overview of your equipment

If you’re working in an enterprise, university, or rental setting, the chances are your equipment list grows regularly. As a result, you need to have a straightforward method for organizing and tracking all of the equipment you manage, whether HDMI cables, camera lenses, batteries, or helmets.

Add a booking system

One thing that can help you create a clear overview is limiting the number of people who can access the equipment. In addition, implementing a booking system for the equipment you manage will mean fewer items go missing, and you know where everything is.

Organize your equipment

If your equipment is all over the place, it makes it incredibly hard to track every item. So instead, your storage room should have everything neatly labeled and organized to reduce the time spent finding things and prevent mishaps down the road.

Use unique stock identifiers

It’s is good to give more significant items (like cameras, bikes, tools, and machinery) unique stock identifiers. Knowing which items are rented out—and where they are—transforms your equipment management and reduces the amount of paperwork and time spent looking for specific items in the long run.

Challenge #2 - Maintaining your equipment

We’ve all been there, you’re using something and discover it’s got low battery or defects early on, and it ruins your day. It can be frustrating for both you and your colleague, student, or customer who has booked the equipment. That’s why you should take an active approach to maintaining your equipment to reduce stress, costs, and complaints.

Pad booking times

It can be hard to perform checks on equipment when you have bookings back to back, so it’s always good to pad booking times. This will allow you to complete any maintenance before equipment is picked up. To further help this, keeping a detailed maintenance log will help you to ensure every item is receiving the attention it needs.

Create dedicated areas for maintenance

If every piece of equipment is lying on shelves, it can be impossible to know which ones need attention without going through every item. By creating a dedicated area for maintaining equipment, you won’t be left with a massive job every time. You can also add a charging station to help you keep on top of equipment that needs to be charged before use.

Challenge #3 - Knowing what to keep and what to throw out

There’s plenty of specialized equipment that becomes outdated in just a couple of years or maybe isn’t even worth purchasing depending on your use case. These factors mean that you need to know what you have, the frequency of use and how much time is spent repairing equipment.

Create reports of equipment usage

By creating reports about how often equipment is used, you can see what’s in demand and what isn’t. This will allow you to sell items you have an excess of and purchase more in-demand products. You can then free up space and reduce repair costs for equipment that you don’t need to hold on to.

Maintain an inventory overview

Knowing when equipment is needed and who needs it can help you maintain a clear overview of your inventory. This means that there will be no double bookings and no equipment goes unused. You can also track what equipment is used most often and what you can recycle or resell if it is not used regularly enough.

Keep track of any cost incurred

It’s good to keep track of any repair and maintenance costs you incur, as some items may be costing you more than you think. Consider looking for new products that are less prone to breaking or creating a maintenance schedule to reduce the downtime for requested items.

Booqable - Streamlined equipment rental and management software

With Booqable, you can keep on top of your equipment management and maintain your inventory with less time and stress involved. Our online booking system means that your colleagues, students, or customers can book equipment exactly when they want it without overlap, while our tracking options mean you know where each item is at all times. Add padding time between your rentals to give yourself some breathing room, keep an overview of your equipment, and generate reports to maximize your organization.