Quick locating of vehicles and containers

SPIER Fahrzeugwerk specializes in customized bodies, extensions and trailers for vans and trucks. At times, there are up to 1,000 vehicles on the company’s campus. Since they do not have license plates and often look alike as two peas in a pod, they can not always be easily identified. How can the right van be found reliably in this constantly changing environment? How do you avoid mistakes due to confusion? How can unproductive waits at the workshop be reduced? So that the desired van can be found reliably and quickly and waits in production can be reduced, SPIER decided in favor of an innovative IoT solution. The two companies telent – a euromicron Group company – and conbee GmbH, both proven specialists for the Internet of Things, jointly created the smart service.

telent equipped SPIER’s campus with a low-radiation LoRa® network. These low-power wireless networks can be installed without any impairment to ongoing business operations, use hardly any power and have a particularly wide range. They are excellently suited for transmitting information, such as that generated in geolocation or tracking. conbee GmbH uses the “conbee LoRa™/BLE Hybrid TAG” in this network. These are devices that are equipped with various sensors and transmit their data over the LoRa® network. Every vehicle is given a tag as soon as it is delivered. From that moment on, the vehicle can be found anytime, anywhere on the grounds, in the production halls or their environment within a very short space of time, rapidly and without any mix-up. It is impossible for one vehicle to be mistaken for another. The data the tags continuously collect and forward over the LoRa® network flows directly into telent’s IoT software platform, is visualized there and can be processed further. That means SPIER’s administrative staff can access various services, such as selective data analysis, real-time location, tracking or alerting. Dashboards with live data increase transparency for all processes and so enable important conclusions to be drawn. In addition, the location of vehicles can also be displayed on mobile devices, such as smartphones.

“The geolocation solution enables us to pinpoint vehicles quickly on the 130,000 m² campus. That slashes the time and effort we need to find them. Thanks to the associated software, every employee can access the vehicles’ position data – using any terminal device,” states Andreas Fast, Head of Office-based Sales and Marketing at SPIER GmbH & Co. Fahrzeugwerk KG. And Lars Petermann, Head of Business Development at telent GmbH, adds: “Backed by our experience in digitizing processes and integrating technologies, we were able to implement a customized IoT solution for SPIER very quickly together with our technology partner. The solution enables the customer to boost the flexibility and efficiency of its business and production processes. As an innovative company, SPIER thus leverages the advantages of digitization to ensure its own success.”