Iemants is a steel construction company and is part of the Eiffage group, together with 5 other facilities - of which 2 in Belgium and 3 abroad. They mainly produce, deliver and assemble heavy, technically complex steel constructions.
The Iemants team is always active at several sites and locations at the same time. Material is spread over all these places, and welding post frames, lighting poles, telehandlers and forklift trucks sometimes move from one site to another. On the sites, a trailer is often used as temporary storage for the smaller material. Unfortunately, the reflex was not always made to document when materials or trailers were moved from one location to another, so that after a while things simply disappeared without trace.
"We often didn't know where a lot of equipment was at the time," explains ICT Hardware & Infrastructure Manager Ton van der Hagen. "Devices sometimes simply got lost. As a result, we lost a lot of valuable time trying to track them down and also had to hire temporary equipment."
A lot of time was lost tracing the missing materials and a solution had to be found so that the outstanding orders could be completed within the agreed period. That solution was often found in renting replacement equipment.
In order to put an end to these additional costs and lost working hours, Iemants looked for a solution that met their requirements. One of these requirements was that the solution should run via the Sigfox network. In addition to eliminating the loss of materials, they wanted to be able to see exactly where which trailers were located, as well as the location of certain forklift trucks and other larger materials.
"We wanted to be able to see where trailers were at any given time, where forklifts were located and where the telescopic handlers and welding stations were located."
With these things in mind, the TAG.GPS proved to be the best option for Iemants. Why? The trailers are currently only used as temporary storage, so it is sufficient to receive a position only once a day. It is often difficult to connect a tracker to a power supply. The TAG.GPS has an internal battery (lifespan of 3 years at 2 positions per day), so there was no need to worry about power supply to the tracker.
An external company was hired to tag all materials and trailers and then add them to the platform using the unique tag IDs. These, in turn, were linked to a description that was clear to everyone.
"The simplicity and user-friendliness of the platform made it very easy to do a roll-out in our company."
According to Ton, the platform is so easy to use that new users do not even need training to learn how to use it. In the beginning, there were still quite a few phone calls to the transport department to ask where a certain trailer was located, but now more and more people are asking to have access to the platform themselves. In consultation with the person in charge, these people are given access to the platform and can therefore follow it all up themselves.
www.smulders.com/nl/iemants
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