Automated management of assets based on RFID triggered alarm messages

Asset management has long been considered as an important issue in enterprises. With the maturing of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, automated management of assets (particularly for mobile ones) in an enterprise using RFID becomes practical. We have developed a RFID-based Asset Management System (RAMS) for a large telecommunication enterprise and this paper details how we maintain the whole life-cycle of assets from their acquisition, transfer, maintenance, audit taking, to retirement. Our system also displays spatial information of assets on an electronic geographical map using Web-based Geographical Information System (WebGIS) technology. Further asset security is improved by automated notification of asset movement and malfunction alarm through Short Message System (SMS). To improve the sending time of the alarm SMSs that have high priority, we also develop a Maximum Position First (MPF) speed-up algorithm for their scheduling. Our initial deployment shows that our system can improve the availability of assets and reduce the asset management cost dramatically. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.