Back in my pre-kids days my husband and myself used to renovate old properties. Great fun but one of the main problems was we kept losing equipment – mostly in walls, under floor boards (we even sent my nephew down once to look for a lost electricial screwdriver) and some just seem to disappear in fresh air. If we had an easy way to find them would have saved hours of searching.
At the moment I am looking at Industry 4 - this is seen as the fourth stage in industrialisation with mechanisation, electrification and computerisation being the first three. One of its key components is smart tools. These are tools that include a small beacon that enables them to be located ( fantastic), and to get other information from them such as usage levels and indicators of wear and tear.
Maybe over kill for the enthusiastic DIY’er but you can see the benefits when you scale it up to manufacturing site levels. Especially when it comes to tools that are either specialised or critical to the manufacturing process. By being able to monitor how the tool is performing it is possible to identify the signs that it might fail so that you can proactively service or replace the tool before it stops working and affects the production flow and effectiveness.
So next time we go to renovate a house we should hopefully have less lost equipment - it’s a good thing since my nephew would not fit under the floorboards now!