Thursday, April 29, 2021 – The North German building materials specialist Henri Benthack GmbH & Co. KG has now supplemented the opheo transport control center, introduced 10 years ago, with an arrival monitor that precisely displays the return times of trucks at its own locations. The arrival monitor operates based on the truck position data reported by opheo.
With this information, warehouse employees can prepare new loads for subsequent tours in advance, pick orders efficiently, and minimize vehicle downtimes. Currently, four of the six Benthack locations are already working with the new solution. The remaining two branches are expected to follow within the next six months.
At Henri Benthack, the arrival monitor is primarily installed visibly in the warehouse area. The employees there can easily identify which vehicle returns to the site at what time, even without prior opheo knowledge. “The arrival monitor has drastically reduced our drivers’ waiting times. There is more time to complete the subsequent tour, and the space situation at the ramp has significantly eased,” summarizes Dennis Kniebel, IT Project Manager at Henri Benthack, regarding the benefits of the solution.
Another effect of the arrival monitor is the space gained in the staging area, as now only the building materials immediately intended for the next loading are placed there. In the past, order pickers often lacked clear instructions on the priority with which orders planned for the respective day were to be handled. “Thanks to the significant advantages of the arrival monitor, this investment will pay for itself within a few weeks,” states Managing Director Carsten Mandrys.
The high level of transparency is the result of the end-to-end digitalization of all processes between order entry and delivery. At Henri Benthack, delivery orders are transferred from the ERP system to the opheo transport control center and compiled into optimized tours in the dispatcher’s disposition cockpit. These, in turn, prioritize orders in the connected ProLogistik warehouse management system and define the picking sequence. The tours are sent via mobile communication to the Samsung tablets mounted in the trucks and processed by the driver.
Over the course of the year, the last 8 of the total 30 vehicles in the Benthack fleet will be equipped with tablets and the opheo Mobile telematics app installed on them. Drivers receive order data and delivery addresses via opheo and can be guided to the next destination using the integrated truck navigation. Every achieved shipment status is documented at the push of a button, and current position data is also transmitted to the central office. With this information, opheo can calculate the arrival time at the customer’s site, the estimated end of the tour, and the return time of each driver for every shipment.
Henri Benthack initially introduced opheo only at its headquarters in Hamburg in 2011. Following the pilot location, branches in Hamburg-Lurup, Neumünster, and Grevesmühlen were successively added. “The activation of the new locations went surprisingly smoothly and quickly,” reports Dennis Kniebel, who is therefore optimistic about the software implementation in Lübeck and Syke. The project is expected to be completed by October. “Then our ten dispatchers will be able to cover for each other across locations in the future, without having to leave their usual workstations,” plans Kniebel. Against this background, absences due to illness, vacation, or similar can be better compensated without increased personnel costs.
Henri Benthack GmbH & Co. KG is a traditional Hamburg-based building materials specialist with over 300 employees. Founded in 1930, the company operates its own truck fleet of over 30 vehicles and maintains a warehouse assortment of 8,500 products. Operating from six locations in Hamburg, Lübeck, Grevesmühlen, Neumünster, and Syke, the company is active in four North German federal states. Further information at www.benthack.de