There's complete chaos with tools and equipment at our sites. How can we get things back in order?
Hello everyone. I'm writing out of sheer despair, because the situation at the company is spiraling out of control, and I don't know what to do.
We're a small installation and construction company. We've grown a bit over the past year; we now have about 25 people on staff, working on three or four sites at a time. And along with this growth, we've experienced a real nightmare with our equipment and inventory management.
We used to record everything in a simple Excel spreadsheet, and it worked somewhat. Now it's a complete disaster. The same thing happens over and over again:
Tools simply "disappear." The foreman at one site swears he gave an expensive hammer drill and laser level to the guys at another site. They say they never even saw them. As a result, we waste hours on calls and sorting things out, while work stands still.
"Ghosts" on the balance sheet. According to the documents, we have three generators. In fact, last week, they couldn't find one at all (apparently it was left somewhere or stolen), the second is broken, and the third is worn out. We have to urgently rent or buy new duplicates, even though we're already spending a huge amount of money on supplies.
The breakdowns are hushed up. A worker breaks a tool, quietly puts it back in the warehouse, and doesn't tell anyone. The next crew arrives at a site 50 km outside the city, retrieves the grinder—and it doesn't turn on. A day is lost, deadlines are running short, and the client is dissatisfied.
It's human error. We tried to get the guys to record everything in a paper log in the warehouse. But they either forget or write it in such a way that it's impossible to decipher. Ultimately, it's impossible to find the culprits.
I feel like we're simply wasting our budget. We're constantly buying more of what we already have, simply because we can't find it when we need it. Guys, how do you handle this? Is there a humane way to organize this process? Are there any simple phone solutions that allow workers to quickly track who took what and where it is (for example, using stickers, barcodes, or scanning), without all this endless paperwork and Excel?
Please share your experiences, otherwise I'll soon go crazy from searching.
I completely understand your frustration because my team went through the exact same nightmare last year. We were constantly rebuying drills and levels that just vanished into thin air. Moving away from spreadsheets saved our sanity. We started using a dedicated asset tracking software that lets our field workers scan QR codes on their phones. Now, everyone knows who has what tool in real-time, and accountability has skyrocketed. It completely stopped the blame game on our sites. You should definitely look into mobile-first tracking systems; they make a massive difference for busy crews.