That solution, provided by International Coding Technologies (ICT), enables the agency to better manage where materials used in an infrastructure construction project originated, which inspections were administered and the results of the inspections. To date, two suppliers have signed up to use the technology and share data related to RFID reads of their tagged precast concrete materials: Cherry Precast and Concrete Pipe & Precast. They stand to gain visibility into their own inventory-management and inspection processes as well.

Typically, precast concrete objects (a manhole or a noise-reduction panel, for example) are produced by suppliers and inspected by NCDOT inspectors before being sold and transported to the North Carolina Department of Transportation for use on roadways and other projects. To help the state agency keep track of the items, a supplier stenciled its own unique identifier on each asset, in order to indicate the manufacturing date, and an inspector stenciled an additional unique number to indicate that item's place in the production sequence of all objects produced in that batch. Stenciled IDs then also had to be input into an electronic system residing on NCDOT's database.

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