DEWALT, a Stanley Black & Decker brand, announced the Tool Connect Partner Network, an arrangement that uses third-party fleet, equipment and storage hardware as extra detection points for its tagged tools and equipment. According to the company's PR Newswire release, the first partners are Geotab, Trackunit and BoxLock.
How it works
Tool Connect already relies on mobile devices running the DEWALT Tool Connect app and on the DEWALT Construction Asset Gateway (DCE082). The gateway is a Bluetooth-enabled cellular unit that attaches to job boxes and tool rooms to detect and locate nearby Tool Connect tools and tagged equipment.
DEWALT says the gap is range. Tools tend to drop out of view once they leave a fixed gateway's reach, for example when they are loaded on a truck or moved around a site. The partner network is meant to close that gap by treating partner hardware as additional detection nodes. Tool locations are captured wherever partner hardware is present.
The three launch partners cover different parts of the operation:
- Geotab: Its devices will detect and report the location of nearby Tool Connect tools as they move across a customer's fleet.
- Trackunit: Trackunit-connected machines will detect Tool Connect tools on and around heavy equipment on the jobsite.
- BoxLock: BoxLock-secured storage units will log a tool's location when it is accessed or nearby.
DEWALT says existing Tool Connect users need no new hardware to use the partner integrations. They can activate them through the Tool Connect website. The release also notes that tool location depends on the accuracy of the third-party partner technology.
The loss figures
DEWALT frames the launch around theft and loss. It cites a study of National Incident-Based Reporting System data that puts annual U.S. construction site equipment theft losses between $300 million and $1 billion. The release says recovery rates are often under 25% and in some cases below 7%. It also says U.S. sites lose roughly $100 million a year in tools. These are DEWALT's figures from the cited study and have not been independently checked here.
What comes next
Eric Loeliger, DEWALT's director of product management, said customers named the network as the biggest obstacle to deploying tool tracking at scale. The company says additional partners are expected to join in the coming year, including telematics providers and platforms covering ERP, estimating and other workflows. No names or dates were given.
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