ALFIX is the only scaffolding man­u­fac­tur­er who offers asset man­age­ment based on QR codes. The dig­i­tal ALFIX SMART ID solu­tion is ide­al for pro­tect­ing scaffolding prod­ucts and retriev­ing prod­uct infor­ma­tion.

Smart­phones in hand, Suo­mi Teline CEO Peter Korho­nen and ALFIX Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Andreas Meier walk towards piles of scaffolding. Korho­nen opens his phone’s mobile app, points the cam­era towards a QR code label, and the phone dis­plays the prod­uct infor­ma­tion with­in moments. The own­er is Suo­mi Teline and the date of pur­chase is 2 May 2021.

The ALFIX SMART ID app uses QR codes to find and dis­play prod­uct infor­ma­tion in sec­onds, link­ing each com­po­nent unam­bigu­ous­ly to its own­er. Meier explains that the sys­tem, launched some 10 years ago, was devel­oped over a long peri­od of time by ALFIX and remains unique in the scaffolding indus­try.

Easy access to ALFIX authen­ti­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion infor­ma­tion

“Paint and dif­fer­ent colours have long been used to mark and iden­ti­fy scaffolding prod­ucts, but these means are insuf­fi­cient to recog­nise the details of own­er­ship and dif­fer­en­ti­ate parts. This is a chal­lenge,” says Korho­nen, fur­ther stat­ing that ALFIX SMART ID solves both prob­lems.

All ALFIX prod­ucts, with the excep­tion of the small­est of parts, include QR codes that allow them to be iden­ti­fied and tracked. Any­one can read the QR code using the app to see com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion about each com­po­nent. App users who log in can also see the own­er­ship infor­ma­tion and date of pur­chase if the part is includ­ed in their inven­to­ry.

One data­base for all scaffolding com­po­nents

ALFIX affix­es labels that include a QR code and SMART ID num­ber to every scaffolding com­po­nent sold by the com­pa­ny. Since 2015, ALFIX has col­lect­ed the indi­vid­ual infor­ma­tion of all its prod­ucts in the SMART ID sys­tem data­base, locat­ed in Ger­many. The QR code makes every part unique and iden­ti­fi­able. If the QR code is dam­aged, the SMART ID num­ber can be used instead to retrieve the prod­uct infor­ma­tion.

Larg­er batch­es include a QR code on top of the prod­uct pack­ag­ing (a “sib­ling swarm”) so that there is no need to process each com­po­nent sep­a­rate­ly. This saves a con­sid­er­able amount of work­ing time.

The sys­tem comes at no extra cost to its users – it is glob­al­ly avail­able free of charge to ALFIX cus­tomers, no mat­ter if they require scaffolding in Fin­land, Ger­many or Uruguay.

Prod­uct infor­ma­tion by QR code

ALFIX pro­vides the back­end sys­tem, and end users only need

• A user account and pass­word for the sys­tem
• A smart­phone with the ALFIX SMART ID app
• An ALFIX prod­uct with a QR code.

The user can view their product’s infor­ma­tion by scan­ning its QR code with the app using the phone’s cam­era. Users who are logged in to their per­son­al ALFIX account can also view own­er­ship infor­ma­tion for the com­po­nents reg­is­tered to the user. For data protection rea­sons, users who are not logged in can view the prod­uct infor­ma­tion but not the own­er­ship details.

Ver­sa­tile appli­ca­tions

Accord­ing to Korho­nen and Meier, the ALFIX SMART ID app is wide­ly used by ALFIX cus­tomers, but some are still unfa­mil­iar with the sys­tem.

All users stand to ben­e­fit great­ly from the app, so they should explore it and exploit it in what­ev­er appli­ca­tions suit them:

• Quick scaffolding com­po­nent own­er­ship checks
• Easy view­ing of prod­uct infor­ma­tion
• Fool­proof iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of sim­i­lar com­po­nents using iden­ti­fiers
• Effort­less online orders for more of the scanned prod­uct
• Ready access to all prod­uct infor­ma­tion in the cen­tral ALFIX data­base
• Protection from scaffolding theft – own­er­ship is always easy to authen­ti­cate with QR codes

CEO Korho­nen has the fol­low­ing to say to poten­tial scaffolding buy­ers: “If you’re about to pur­chase scaffolding, I advise you to note that the ALFIX sys­tem is actu­al­ly use­ful, tru­ly unique and a great com­pet­i­tive advan­tage com­pared to oth­er sup­pli­ers.”

Dur­ing the meet­ing, MD Meier also reveals that new fea­tures are being devel­oped for the app and will be avail­able to users at a lat­er date.

ALFIX SMART ID is the ide­al scaffolding protection solu­tion

Because scaffolding is valu­able and may be tar­get­ed by thieves, the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and track it is invalu­able. Dig­i­tal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and authen­ti­ca­tion is a clear ben­e­fit of ALFIX prod­ucts com­pared to com­peti­tors.

Togeth­er, Meier and Korho­nen address any poten­tial thieves by point­ing out that ALFIX prod­ucts are not worth mess­ing with because ALFIX SMART ID makes the true own­er easy to dis­cov­er, whether by the own­er them­selves or the police or the man­u­fac­tur­er. Any ALFIX prod­ucts miss­ing their labels are imme­di­ate­ly sus­pect.

The QR code is also a quick way for own­ers to prove their own­er­ship in case of ambi­gu­i­ty or mis­takes.

Would you like to use QR codes to pro­tect and authen­ti­cate your scaffolding? Get in touch with Peter Korho­nen for more infor­ma­tion.