⁣Digitalisation is changing the world of intralogistics. Modern IOT-based logistics tools continuously collect data that can be analysed and used to optimise complex warehouse and transport processes. The network and advanced sensors also allow for forklift trucks to operate autonomously. As a result, fleet and fleet management is becoming increasingly intelligent, and networking and real-time data access are becoming more important.

⁣The joint project between the Waberer's Group and Magyar Telekom is the first milestone on this journey. A positive customer experience is not just a slogan in this project, but a reality lived every day.

Background - More efficient operation is important

Waberer's Group is Hungary's leading logistics company. It has a fleet of 400 forklift trucks at five sites, operated by 600 forklift drivers and a fleet of 16 forklift truck models from 3 different manufacturers. The question is, how can these machines be operated efficiently? The site manager also needs real-time telematics data on running times, breakdowns, possible accidents and the location of the machine.

Balázs Büki, Fleet Manager of Waberer's Group, was faced with these problems when he was looking for a ready-made solution to manage Waberer's heterogeneous fleet of forklifts.

An interesting fact within the logistics industry is that while in truck operations it is quite natural that the tractor and sometimes the trailer is equipped with some kind of telematics smart device, this is not always the case for forklifts used in warehouses.

Challenge - utilisation management for cost optimisation

Warehouse logistics is not a cheap activity. Even if we don't count the purchase price of a forklift truck (we're talking serious millions), the repair and maintenance costs of such a fleet are around HUF 170-180 million per year, the ever-increasing fuel prices result in a fuel bill of HUF 50 million per year, and that's not even mentioning the labour costs.

Forklift truck utilisation management can therefore be an effective cost-cutting measure, as it is often the case that there are too many or too few machines.

Benefits - a future-proof solution in a heterogeneous environment

• Magyar Telekom offered the Waberer's Group a solution from a wide range of unique technologies that works in a heterogénéiul environment.
• Provides a rapidly customisable solution that can be implemented in a very short time
• Increase competitiveness with your partner
• Enables cost optimisation
• Future-proof

Successful solution - Traceable and analysable movement to increase efficiency

According to Tamás Tobak, IT Director of the Waberer's Group, Magyar Telekom came to the company with a ready-made, mature solution, which was developed in partnership with Pozi Development Kft., whose expertise in warehouse logistics, tracking and tracing the movement of machines and assets in enclosed or open spaces, analytics and, above all, efficiency gains. In fact, the solution is intelligence in a small box and a software system to analyse it.

During the pilot project, this smart little device, Connectbox, could be installed in the forklift trucks immediately, and running the management software in the cloud was an easy task to master. 80% of the devices communicate via wifi and 20% via GSM network due to lack of coverage. A big advantage of the modular smartbox solution is that if the smartboxes are disconnected from the network for some reason, they can store data for 24 hours. The amount of data is not large in itself, 200bytes/forklift truck/second, which is less than 20 MB per day.

It was important that the technology chosen was the most advanced currently available. The Connection of Things (CoT) platform allows to display all cumulative position and vehicle data on a single dashboard. The management module, available in the cloud, is the tool that currently provides fleet managers, and later even shift supervisors, with the information they need to help them make decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Although the main virtue of the system supplied by Magyar Telekom  is optimisation, professional management of uptime and downtime, and thus cost optimisation, it was not purely financial rationality that led the Waberer's Group to make the selection.

An important aspect was "future-proofing", which is one of the main guidelines of Magyar Telekom. In the near future, the system will be equipped with attributes that will enable even more sophisticated fleet management.

Just some of the possibilities:

• Collision detection
• Electronically generated machine logbook
• In-warehouse real-time forklift tracking
• Remote management