TransAlta, Canada's largest investor-owned electric utility, boasts more than $5 billion in assets and $1.6 billion in revenues, it recently discovered a problem at one of its plants that was costing the company both time and money. In its Edmonton plant tool crib, tools were flowing out to work sites but were not always being returned, and the company had no way to accurately track where the tools were or who had them last. Crib operators were armed with nothing more than a sign-out sheet and when tools didn't come back, there was no way to assign responsibility to anyone for the loss.

Unfortunately, tool theft, unreliable tool tracking, and a lack of tool accountability are common problems at plants everywhere. Too often, these plants operate with archaic "pen and paper" procedures that not only slow issue/return times, but also lack the tracking information required to help curb tool-related losses within an organization. TransAlta decided it was time to fix this problem in its Edmonton plant. A main ingredient...