Union Pacific Railroad operates one of North America’s largest rail networks — including tunnels that can run as long as eight miles. Those tunnels trap carbon monoxide and hold limited oxygen, so if a train stops inside one, crews need immediate, reliable access to emergency oxygen equipment. RES replaced UPRR’s honor-system approach to that equipment with a combined RFID equipment tracking and access-control system.

The challenge

UPRR’s existing process relied on employees manually logging the oxygen tanks and masks they picked up and dropped off at each station.

  • The system ran on the honor code — no one verified that entries were made correctly, or at all, creating a serious data-accuracy problem.
  • Nothing confirmed that the person taking equipment was authorized and certified to use it.
  • Unreliable usage records meant a tank that actually needed servicing could be taken back into the field.

How the RFID equipment tracking system works

RES built an on-site system combining RFID, biometrics, and voice guidance, backed by software that bridges UPRR’s corporate network and the local server and syncs them every night so the latest information is always in use. The solution runs on RES’s AIMS platform, paired with a biometric authentication and security layer and a web dashboard for analytics.

Each oxygen tank and mask carries a metal RFID tag. At pickup and drop-off, an employee’s fingerprint is read, and the system checks — against synced network data — whether they’re certified, authorized, and even scheduled to work at that time. Voice prompts tell the employee which tank to take based on current servicing status; as they exit, the RFID tag is read and linked to that individual. On return, voice prompts direct where to place equipment, and RFID logs what came back and what didn’t. The only manual step left is noting whether a tank was actually used. The dashboard gives authorized users visibility into inventory levels, equipment servicing, usage, and employee recertification from anywhere.

The results

  • Accuracy reached 100% through automatic data entry and network communication.
  • Nightly syncs keep information continuously up to date.
  • Biometric authentication delivers far tighter security control over who can take equipment.
  • The dashboard gives authorized users and administrators access to network data anytime, anywhere.

The takeaway

When equipment is a safety lifeline, “we think it’s there and serviced” isn’t good enough. RES made UPRR’s emergency-equipment tracking automatic, verified, and tied to the right, certified people. That’s the foundation of RES’s RFID asset tracking for high-stakes equipment management. To see what it could do for your operation, talk to an RES RFID engineer.