Digital Asset Tracking for Welding Operations: A Smarter Approach with nexTrack

Cylinder management is one of those things that seems straightforward until you’re running a busy welding operation. Suddenly you’ve got cylinders spread across multiple departments, rental charges that don’t add up, and no clear picture of what’s on hand versus what’s out on the floor. It’s a common problem, and it’s one we built nexTrack to solve.

nexTrack is our suite of integrated tracking technologies that gives welding operations full visibility into their gas assets, deliveries, and inventory, without relying on manual logbooks or guesswork.

What nexTrack Is Made Of

nexTrack brings together three technologies that work in tandem: Roadnet, Advanced Cylinder Management (ACM), and TIMS Electronic Delivery (TED). Each one handles a different piece of the asset management picture, and together they cover the full cycle from delivery to return.

Roadnet: Real-Time Delivery Visibility

Roadnet connects customers to our network of over 200 drivers with live GPS tracking. From the moment an order is placed, you receive notifications with delivery windows, ETA updates, and confirmation when the product arrives. If there’s a delay, you hear about it before it affects your schedule. You can choose how and when to receive updates, whether by email, SMS, or another format, and you can customize which notifications you want.

Advanced Cylinder Management: Know Where Every Cylinder Is

ACM is the backbone of nexTrack for asset tracking. Every cylinder, whether industrial, medical, or specialty gas, receives a unique identification number and barcode. That barcode gets scanned at every stage of the cylinder’s life cycle: from our plant to the branch, to your facility, and back again.

What that means in practice is that you get accurate cylinder balances, fill history, rental period tracking down to the individual cylinder, and aging reports that flag assets that have been sitting too long. Physical audits become less necessary because the data is updated continuously. Returns get credited to the correct account automatically, which removes a common source of billing disputes.

TIMS Electronic Delivery: Paperless and Flexible

TIMS Electronic Delivery (TED) lets our drivers go fully paperless at your site. Delivery tickets, PO numbers, quantities, and lot numbers can all be updated on-site from a mobile device. Any changes made are immediately reflected on the receipt, and proof of delivery is emailed directly from the driver before they leave. If your delivery needs change last-minute, TED gives our drivers the flexibility to accommodate that without paperwork delays or manual corrections after the fact.

What It Adds Up To for Welding Operations

Across all three components, nexTrack gives welding operations something that manual processes simply can’t: a continuous, accurate record of where assets are, what’s been delivered, and what’s coming. Backed by our expert KnowHow™, we help customers set up nexTrack in a way that fits their facility and their workflow, not the other way around.

We help our clients Forge Forward with ease, and having clean, reliable data on your gas assets is a foundational part of that. If you’re ready to take the guesswork out of cylinder and delivery management, reach out to your local nexAir team and we’ll walk you through how nexTrack works for an operation like yours.