In a big manufacturing plant with a lot of people and a lot of equipment needs, it is difficult to know what rental equipment is needed, where it is located and if it is actually being used. This was discovered at the Bayer Corporation's Baytown plant in the United States.

"We didn't know exactly what equipment was needed in our plant, and sometimes, we could see a piece of equipment go out the gates at the same time the identical type was being returned" Dale Bara says."We did not have a method of tracking or transferring equipment internally, nor did we know how long the equipment was rented. It was a nightmare both for people who needed the equipment and for the accounting department. We had rental equipment scattered all over our site that, at times, was kept on rent even when the job was over. We were using some thirty different companies to rent from throughout the course of a year. We needed control."

"Also, our accounting department wanted the invoice problems to go away," Bara says. "They wanted more uniform billing structure, and we wanted to make sure the equipment we were paying for was actually being used and not forgotten."

As a result, Bayer Corporation formed a quality team to look at the process of handling rental equipment. With their employee's needs in focus, the team surveyed and approved or qualified about 10 of the 30 companies they felt could help them solve their problems."We learned a tremendous amount about the different processes that some of the companies had implemented at some of their customer's sites" Bara says"The most promising options for us appeared to be an onsite managed rental system."

In 1994, the embryo of Prime Energy's and RSC Equipment Rental's on-site store with an integrated Total Control® software was invented. After ten years onsite, it has proved to be a success, and the software has been fine-tuned over the years to handle the processes. Simplicity has been the key driver.

"Reports are sent automatically, but everyone knows that reporting is like reading yesterday's news" creator Gordon McDonald, who leads the Total Control® development, says. "It is more than a software program. It's a management process that really challenges conventional ways of doing business. When the software is integrated into the customer's accounting system, the customer gets total control of the handling of rental equipment and their owned equipment, as well. The paperwork is held to a minimum"

"One way for a company to save money is to put equipment off rent when it is not in use, and this software helps the customer to manage this process," he says. "If a fork-lift is supposed to be rented for two weeks, an e-mail will automatically notify the customer when this time has passed."

Another way of saving money is to handle re-rents professionally. In this process, transparency is important. The customer can see the bid tabulation when the on-site store needs to rent equipment outside of RSC owned equipment, such as fences, tents and more. Without having to deal with the bidding, the customer can see that the process is handled in a correct way. For more information on Total Control® and how it can benefit your productivity, please contact your RSC account executive or simply call 1-800-222-7777.