Did you ever wonder who monitors all those items of capital equipment for the campus? Equipment Management must inventory all 37,907 items in the campus inventory, representing almost $300 million in campus assets, at least once every two years.

Technology is available to facilitate the inventory process in the form of portable, hand-held, laser-barcode scanners. The handheld scanner selected for use at UCI is manufactured by Symbol Technologies (www.symbol.com) and runs the Palm operating system. The scanner displays the equipment item’s property number, description, serial number, and location of record. It is also possible to perform edits on the spot.

NACS staff programmed the application that runs on the Palm O/S and developed a custom interface which synchronizes scanner records and AdCom databases. Adcom made some parallel changes in their systems to accommodate the new application.

After the inventory process is completed, the data is uploaded to the AdCom server. The database is updated and documents campus compliance with State and Federal accounting requirements. Use of the handheld scanner in limited settings has already shown its potential to greatly cut down the time and manpower needed to inventory capital equipment. Departments who would like to use the new system should contact Helen Chang, hmchang@uci.edu, x46111