Jul 07, 2010Dutch truck retailer BAS Trucks maintains a stock of 1,000 tractor heads, trailers and mixer trucks at three locations. As such, locating a particular vehicle requested by a customer can be time-consuming. Staff members utilize golf carts to travel more quickly around the company's lots in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, but the process of finding a specific vehicle and making it available to a customer still consumed a large portion of employees' daily work hours.
"We tried to make a calculation of how many hours we spend finding trucks," says Theo Van Kempen, BAS Trucks' business operations director, "but we stopped analyzing, because we found out that everybody is looking for trucks all day."
The company believes it has solved that problem with a real-time location system (RTLS) provided by Zebra Enterprise Solutions (ZES). The system, currently being installed, is expected to go live this summer. The RTLS should not only make it easier to locate vehicles, Van Kempen says, but also increase the staff's efficiency in preparing new vehicles to be posted for sale on the company's Web site.
The system will enable BAS Trucks' management to analyze the amount of time spent in the preparation of vehicles for sale, which could help the firm further improve efficiency, says Chris Horne, ZES' regional sales manager of business solutions. If, for instance, the use of the RTLS finds that each vehicle's wash cycle is taking longer than expected, managers can then address the problem. The system can also identify when a large number of vehicles are collecting in a single location, and at what time such bottlenecks occur.
In addition, Van Kempen expects the system will reduce the amount of labor previously spent tracking inventory. "We can automatically check the presence of our stock," he explains, thanks to the real-time locating system. Without the system, the company presently checks its stock every two months, counting each truck to ensure that none are missing. "With the RTLS, we can do this check every five minutes."
By improving efficiency and making it easier to locate cars, the firm hopes to increase its per-annum sales by at least 20 percent over the next three years, from its current level of 5,000 sales. This increase in efficiency, Van Kempen says, should provide the company with a return on its investment within three to four years.
Once posted, buyers—trucking companies, as well as truck dealers—can either purchase vehicles outright and have them transported to their location, or else visit the Eindhoven lot in order to see and test-drive the trucks in person.
It currently takes BAS Trucks approximately 24 hours of preparation time from a vehicle's acquisition until it is posted on the company's Web site. With the RTLS, the firm hopes to reduce that time to between eight and 12 hours, by tracking the vehicles through servicing and identifying bottlenecks.
The system is also expected to reduce the time it takes to locate the particular trucks customers want to see. Buyers often go to the BAS lots to view and test a vehicle—and, in many cases, they want to test several. There's an expression in the used-vehicle industry, Horne says: "If you haven't gotten the bum [rear end] in the seat... the sale won't happen." If visitors are unable to test-drive the trucks, he notes, they are more likely to leave without buying one.
When a truck is first entered into the ZES system, an active 2.4 GHz Zebra WhereTag IV RFID tag, compliant with the ISO 24730-2 standard, is affixed to the vehicle—the exact spot has yet to be determined—in such a way that the automatic wash station will not damage the tag.
The bar code printed on the tag, which is linked to the RFID chip's ID number, is scanned using a Motorola handheld reader, and the bar code on the vehicle itself is also scanned. The two IDs are then associated in the firm's back-end database. In that way, information about the vehicle—such as its description, make and model—can also be linked to the tag's RFID number. In addition, a photo of the vehicle is also taken, and is linked to that data in the ZES software, known as Visibility Server Software (VSS), residing on BAS Trucks' back-end system.
When the truck is moved to the company's main yard, which holds up to 850 vehicles, WherePort interrogators and exciters installed around the perimeter on light poles capture the truck's ID number and forward that information to the back-end system via a cabled connection. The system then triangulates on the tag, in order to determine that truck's location within a radius of about 10 feet.
WherePort exciters and readers will also be installed at two satellite storage locations, at which several hundred vehicles are stored. But because these lots are smaller, the company reports, the system will only detect when the vehicles arrive and depart, not their specific lot locations.
The VSS software employs a computer-aided design (CAD) drawing of the lot, thereby providing a display of that facility with icons showing the location of each vehicle requested by BAS Trucks' staff. Employees can accomplish this task by inputting either the vehicle identification number (VIN), or the truck's make and model. The Web-based data could also be made available to the sales staff in the lot, as they carry Apple iPad computers. If, for example, a customer requested another make or model of a particular vehicle, Horne says, a salesperson could simply access the server and input that information in order to view a screen indicating the location of such a truck.
BAS Trucks is initially utilizing 1,300 tags; 26 WherePort exciters, mounted above entry and exit gates to lots, as well as at washing and servicing areas; and 11 receivers, mounted throughout the main storage lot for location purposes.
