Dutch truck retailer BAS Trucks adopts RFID real-time location system to improve car search efficiency
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Dutch truck retailer BAS Trucks has a daily inventory of more than 1,000 tractor heads, trailers and mixing trucks. The company is currently facing a major problem that is very time-consuming truck positioning. When looking for a truck, employees drove a golf cart to look around the company’s parking lot in Eindhoven. Even if they travel by car, it is still very time-consuming to locate a truck in the parking lot.
“We tried to calculate the time required to locate the truck,” said Theo Van Kempen, BAS Trucks’ business operations director. “But this kind of meaningless analysis was quickly stopped because we found that almost everyone was looking for a truck every day.”
Dutch truck retailer BAS Trucks is located in the parking lot of Eindhoven
The company believes that the real-time location system (RTLS) provided by Zebra Enterprise Solutions (ZES) can solve this problem. The system-which has been installed and is expected to be officially launched this summer-will not only make vehicle positioning easier, Van Kempen said, it will also improve the efficiency of staff preparing new cars for online sales.
This system helps the management of BAS Trucks analyze the preparation time for vehicle sales and helps the company further improve efficiency, said Chris Horne, ZES District Business Solutions Sales Manager. For example, the RTLS management can find out whether the washing cycle of the vehicle is longer than expected and propose corresponding solutions. The system can also identify when and where a bottleneck occurs in the flow of vehicles.
In addition, Van Kempen also expects that this system will reduce the labor required for inventory tracking. “The system helps us to automatically detect inventory,” he explained. In the past, the company checked inventory every two months and counted every truck to ensure that there was no loss. “Using a real-time positioning system, we can execute it every 5 minutes,” Van Kempen said.
With the improvement of efficiency and the simplification of vehicle positioning, the company hopes to increase its annual sales by at least 20% in the next three years, which can earn the company a return on investment within 3-4 years.
BAS Trucks is one of the largest truck retailers in Europe. Usually the company buys vehicles in large quantities at one time-50 or 60 vehicles-and then inspects, repairs and cleans the trucks, and then puts them on the website for sale.
Once online, buyers-truck companies and truck dealers either buy trucks directly from the Internet or come to the parking lot to test drive the trucks in person.
Currently, it takes approximately 24 hours to prepare from the acquisition of a truck to the sale of BAS Trucks online. After adopting the real-time positioning system, the company expects this time to be reduced to 8-12 hours.
This system will also reduce the time it takes for customers to locate the vehicle. Buyers often come to the parking lot to check and test drive their vehicles-usually they will test drive multiple times. The application of this system greatly saves customers’ time.
When the truck arrives at the parking lot for the first time, the worker installs an active 2.4 GHz Zebra WhereTag IV RFID tag (in accordance with ISO 24730-2) on the vehicle. The installation location has not yet been determined, but it will ensure that the automatic car wash process will not damage the tag.
The barcode printed on the surface of the label corresponds to the ID code of the RFID chip. Workers use a Motorola handheld reader to read the tags and scan the vehicle barcode. The two ID codes correspond to the company’s back-end database. In this way, the vehicle’s information-such as description, photo, manufacturer, and model-also corresponds to the ID code of the RFID tag. .
Vehicles flow through various stations for necessary maintenance and cleaning. Whenever a vehicle enters the site, a Zebra WherePort activator activates the tag. The tag then sends its ID code to a reader via a 2.4 GHz signal, which forwards the ID code to the VSS software via a cable connection. The software determines the location of the tag and the direction of the vehicle’s movement (based on the strength of the signal), and updates the vehicle location accordingly.
The truck was then taken to the company’s main parking lot (place 850 vehicles). There, the WherePort readers and activators installed on the lamp posts around the parking lot read the truck’s ID code and forward the information to the back-end system via a cable connection. The system then locates the tag to within 10 feet.
VSS software uses computer-aided design software to draw a parking lot plan, and uses signs to identify the vehicles that are searched. Employees carry Apple iPad computers with them, and enter the vehicle identification code, or the manufacturer and model of the vehicle when needed, to quickly check the location of the vehicle on the screen.
BAS Trucks currently uses a total of 1,300 tags; 26 WherePort activators (installed above the entrance and exit, and cleaning and service areas); 11 receivers (installed parking lot for positioning).
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