You could implement this sort of tracking in a very non-intrusive way with RFID: put an RFID scanner in the supply room, which reads the employees' and equipments' RFID tags such that the monitoring system knows that employee X left room Y with equipment Z.
Hasn't this sort of thing been in production for years with UPS/WalMart/etc?
Yes, we have a variety of rules and methods to do things like that, but you might be surprised at how many issues there still are. In the Wal-Mart case for example, they spent years trying to get compliance from their suppliers, and in the end they had to cut back on their goals and requirements because of the extra steps (and costs) needed.
Also, RFID as a commercialized technology is still relatively new (even though it's been around for a long time), and there are a lot of technical hurdles that most people don’t know about. For example, a standard, Wal-Mart style RFID tag won't read if you hold it close to the body (or put it in a pocket), or put it on metal or liquid; in those cases, you have to use a special tag, or a battery assisted tag ("active rfid", which can be much more expensive), or an "RTLS" tag (wifi, ultra-wideband, etc). It's all really interesting (to me anyway), but the industry has had to spend quite a bit of time getting over all of the hurdles that are non-obvious (like any industry I suppose).
Hasn't this sort of thing been in production for years with UPS/WalMart/etc?