Tire Management: Positive Identification

The traditional way of looking at tire costs is product-only: new tires, retreads, and wheels. But product is only half the pie. The other half involves service costs: administration, warranties, carrying inventory, and so on. If you’re not managing this stuff, too, you’re no doubt missing opportunities to save big.

Part of the problem with managing tires is that they’re hard to track. Bar codes and other visible markings are scrubbed off in no time.

The answer is to leave your mark inside the tire, says Ghislain Lemire, vice-president of Syscan International. The Montreal-based developer of tire management software worked with a German microchip maker to produce a small but rugged transponder you can patch onto the casing of the tire. The chip, which costs less than $5, has a unique code you can read with an RFID (radio frequency identification) scanner after the tire has been mounted on the vehicle.

“Having the chip to identify the tire is very important to us because it enhances what you can do with our management software,” says Lemire. “Once you know which tire is which, you can import that data into the software and track how the tire is being used, how it is performing, and what costs are associated with it. You can build better preventive maintenance schedules, analyze the performance of different tire specifications, verify warranty information, and control inventory throughout the life of the tire. The end result is you make better decisions about which tires are best for you.”

Syscan’s transponder does not provide temperature or pressure readings-at this stage in development, such chips need a battery, and they won’t survive the retread process. And it is not yet compatible with RFID scanners other than a Psion device Syscan offers.

However, the Syscan chip is simple enough to install yourself, and the company is working to make other handheld scanners compatible.