Oregon State University Deploys AeroScout Wi-Fi RTLS to Improve The Classroom Experience for All Students

Tracks The Real-Time Location of Specialized Furniture for Students with Disabilities Across 40-Building Campus to Increase Accessibility and Inventory Utilization

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oregon State University (OSU) has successfully deployed the AeroScout® Real-Time Location System (RTLS) and Asset Tracking & Management solution campus-wide. OSU’s Disability Access Services (DAS) uses the solution to track the real-time location of specialized items for students, faculty and visitors with disabilities and special needs. The system helps OSU reduce costs through improved inventory utilization while ensuring that the campus is accessible and comfortable for everyone.

“We have a lot of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and we needed to find a cost-effective way to accommodate them with specialized furniture”

OSU is a leading research university located 90 miles south of Portland. The University’s Disability Access Services facilitates access to University programs and services for students, faculty, staff and visitors with disabilities through accommodations, education, consultation and advocacy.

DAS implemented AeroScout’s RTLS and Asset Tracking & Management solution to track the location of hundreds of assets – primarily expensive, specialized furniture such as SurfaceWorks tables, lumbar support chairs, Izzy podiums, and interpreter and transcriber chairs – dispersed across the campus. The system, which works with OSU’s standard Wi-Fi network, allows the DAS team to immediately locate needed items across the expansive 1,800-acre Corvallis campus, consisting of 40 buildings and more than 450 classrooms, and reposition the items where they’re needed.

“We have a lot of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and we needed to find a cost-effective way to accommodate them with specialized furniture,” said Jennifer Gosset, Disability Access Services Coordinator at Oregon State University. “Before deploying the AeroScout solution, there were times when 75 percent of DAS assets were unaccounted for. This impacted the campus experience for many of our students and staff members and drove up costs. Now, we know exactly where every item is. As a result, we’re able to provide a much better experience for our disabled students and we’ve significantly improved asset utilization and staff productivity.”

The solution consists of AeroScout’s MobileView software and AeroScout Wi-Fi Tags. The tags are attached to the specialized furniture and send location information for each item over OSU’s Wi-Fi network to MobileView, which has a graphical map of the campus that shows the real-time location of each item.

“OSU has applied asset tracking in an original way that has had a real and significant impact on the campus experience while also reducing costs and inefficiencies,” said Janet Chaffin, President of AeroScout Industrial. “It is one example of the many uses of the AeroScout Wi-Fi RTLS across a wide range of industries – from tracking high-value assets across a university, to driving lean manufacturing, to improving safety in mines and on oil and gas platforms, to helping hospitals operate more efficiently. We’re proud to be working with OSU on this important initiative.”

About AeroScout

AeroScout Industrial, part of Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE: SWK), is a global market leader in Enterprise Visibility solutions. Customers improve operational efficiency using AeroScout products that leverage standard Wi-Fi networks to track and manage the location, condition and status of mobile assets and people. Many of AeroScout’s customers are Fortune 500 companies that specialize in process and discrete manufacturing, mining, logistics and healthcare. The company invented the first Wi-Fi-based RFID tag, and today is widely recognized as leading the market in number of deployments. AeroScout has offices in Redwood City, California, as well as in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Latin America. For more information, please visit http://www.AeroScout.com/Industrial.

AeroScout is a registered trademark of Stanley Black & Decker. Information is subject to change without notice.