Tuesday, August 19, 2014 – The trading company Benz Baustoffe, based in Neckarbischofsheim, now controls and monitors its truck fleet with the transport control system opheo and the integrated telematics system opheo MOBILE. The aim of the transformation is improved customer service, reducing workload for the transpot team and savings in vehicles. The project incldues the automation of remote tachograph reading, Benz wants to use the telemetry data for better driver evaluation and efficiency to improve fuel consumption and vehicle wear (brakes, tyres).
Before the opheo introduction, each of Benz’s seven branches was responsible for planning its own delivery routes. This often led to inefficient use of the trucks. With opheo, the owner-managed family business can now dispatch its fleet more centrally and exploit synergies between the locations.
“We have set up workstations with four screens for our dispatchers, three of which are used exclusively for fleet management and dispatch,” explains Benz Managing Director and Project Manager Christian Schieck. The monitors show trucks and orders, a road map and a graphic tour plan from left to right. “The systematic arrangement of the information in the opheo dispatch cockpit convinced us from the start,” recalls Schieck. The IT expert also liked the modern user interface and “the young and creative development team from initions”.
opheo receives the order data via an interface directly from the Unitrade ERP system. After dispatch, the trips and order data are then sent by the planner directly to the drivers, who are equipped with Samsung Galaxy tablets and the opheo MOBILE telematics app. The app handles order management and navigation. The current vehicle positions, driving and rest times and order statuses are reported back to the central team in real time.
The forecasting function checks whether a vehicle is still on schedule and extrapolates any deviations to the rest of the current tour and all subsequent tours. opheo displays impending violations of delivery deadlines or EU social regulations early on, without the dispatcher having to laboriously calculate times. “This has enabled us to significantly improve our adherence to deadlines and the quality of our service,” says Schieck.
Solvares Logistics also developed a geofencing function specifically for Benz for automated notification reminders. If requested by the customer, opheo generates a message with the calculated arrival time shortly before the actual delivery. The function is activated, for example, when the truck is only 25 kilometers or 30 minutes away from its destination. The reminder message appears on the display of the driver’s tablet and contains all the information for a telephone notification to the customer. “Shifting the notification to the drivers led to a noticeable reduction in workload for dispatch and a higher service quality,” states Schieck.
Another goal of the IT project concerns economical driving. For this purpose, a total of 18 trucks were equipped with truck boxes that are connected to the CAN bus systems. From September, the telemetry data from the vehicles will also be transmitted and analyzed in the opheo PORTAL. On this basis, Benz intends to specifically train drivers and noticeably reduce consumption values and wear.
Benz also intends to handle tachograph data management via opheo in the near future. The digital tachographs will then be read out regularly and automatically via remote query. The data is archived in compliance with regulations and is available at the same time in the opheo TACHOWEB. This gives dispatchers access to the current driving and rest times. Impending violations of the driving time regulations can thus be identified and prevented at an early stage.
Benz Baustoffe is an owner-managed, medium-sized family business with a wide range of products in the areas of structural engineering, garden, roof, insulation, civil engineering, tiles, drywall and building elements. Benz also offers extensive services from product training to logistics. A fleet of 32 trucks is available to supply customers — including trucks with and without trailers, tippers and semi-trailer trucks. All vehicles have crane attachments and a wide variety of unloading methods in order to meet the challenges that the heterogeneous product portfolio in the construction sector poses for logistics and to offer a suitable solution for customers. The customers include companies in the construction sector as well as private builders.
The delivery area extends to the region south of Frankfurt to north of Stuttgart or east of Kaiserslautern to west of Würzburg. Supra-regional customers of the online shop www.benz24.de are supplied throughout Germany, Switzerland and France.
The company, founded in 1919 by Wilhelm Benz, now employs more than 250 people. In addition to the headquarters in Neckarbischofsheim, Benz operates six other locations in Eberbach, Beerfelden, Hockenheim, Hemsbach, Bensheim and Neckarsulm. There is also an online shop for building materials and hardware store items. The management is in the hands of Roland Benz, Nina and Christian Schieck.
More information at: www.benz-baustoffe.de