X9: Tool for Tracking Mobile Devices Among Teams

Usage of mobile devices in research and development (R&D) projects is ever more present in large institutions. In projects, it is known that there is a limited quantity of physical resources (samples) available for developers handling. Many times, what happens is sharing of those samples among users, who need to work in concurrent activities of the same project. Given this scenario, we can see the importance of a robust, real-time tracking of those samples after they are assigned to a researcher. This tracking aims to avoid sample losses, as well as delays in both result delivery and samples return. In this article, we developed a tool called X9, whose purpose is to monitor samples belonging to one such project in real time, using any of the developers computers USB ports of the institute. Our results show that X9 usage in those computers helped drastically reduce lost samples quantity, which were shared in a given time frame, on ongoing projects. Also, there was gain in agility when tracking device samples, and increased device samples return on due date. This outcome was achieved due to the X9 software (SW) having an up to date database containing all detailed access history and connection time of any given sample, and also by notifying sample owner of non-owner usage in real time.