A small blue box for more safety

Early in the morning, I meet Volker Quirin, the developer and inventor of Mobile Easykey. We have an appointment in Friedrichsdorf near Frankfurt am Main, at the headquarters of Domnick+Müller - the company behind the fleet management system. We want to visit one of the market leader's customers: the Rudolph Logistics Group - a global player in the logistics business with 5,000 employees and 40 locations worldwide.

Spare parts for bearings worldwide

Soon we will be standing in front of the two 140,000 square meter halls of the Automotive division of Rudolph Logistik in rural Volkmarsen in the north of Hesse - Hesse's largest covered storage area. Rudolph stores spare parts from car manufacturers there and ships them primarily to their central warehouses worldwide. The parts leave Volkmarsen by truck or via the company's own rail ramp, one of the largest in Germany at 220 meters. 80 employees work at the site in up to three shifts.

Against the unauthorized use of forklifts

In the meeting room, we meet Hans Christian Sproedt, who was responsible for the introduction of Mobile Easykey at the Volkmarsen site as a project planner in the Automotive division of Rudolph Logistik. "The beginnings with the system have grown historically, so to speak. It was only over time that we realized how powerful and helpful Mobile Easykey is," says Sproedt. Volkmarsen was the first location to use the fleet management system with all its possibilities. All Jungheinrich forklift trucks here are equipped with the small blue box, which sends its data via WLAN to the software, the Mobile Easykey Manager, and receives it from it. The drivers have an individual transponder chip. There are also the so-called master and workshop transponders for checking and releasing after triggered crash alarms and for transfer to the workshop. "Since we implemented Mobile Easykey, the costs for violent damage have been reduced and, of course, the safety of our employees has improved considerably," explains Steffen Rödger, who is responsible for quality management and employee training and development in Volkmarsen. He is responsible for fleet management on site, trains employees and uses the Mobile Easykey Manager to monitor the maintenance and inspection dates for the forklifts.

How the idea was born

Volker Quirin is the inventor of Mobile Easykey. He explains how Mobile Easykey was developed. "Frankfurt Airport was a customer of Domnick+Müller. Violent damage was occurring more and more frequently and was becoming increasingly costly. The customer wanted an access control system - the nucleus for Mobile Easykey. Over the last 15 years, the pure access control system has developed into a comprehensive modular system with patented crash sensor technology and extensive options for fleet optimization. With 70,000 modules sold, we are now the market leader in manufacturer-independent systems."

Successful pilot project

Mobile Easykey prevents unauthorized use of forklifts.

Following the pilot project at ten locations, Mobile Easykey is now being successively rolled out at further locations in Germany for all business units. Responsibility now lies in the hands of Andreas Pfeiffer, who is responsible for energy and fleet management for industrial trucks in the Rudolph Group. We meet him at the company headquarters in Baunatal, half an hour's drive from Volkmarsen. In addition to implementing Mobile Easykey, Pfeiffer is also responsible for setting up the database in the software.

All costs incurred when operating the forklift trucks are recorded and can therefore be precisely allocated to the operating hours. The aim is to obtain a profitability analysis for each individual forklift truck at the touch of a button, for each location, centrally from Baunatal. The Mobile Easykey software makes this possible - as soon as all the data has been entered.

According to Pfeiffer, it is also particularly interesting to determine the exact hours of use, an important decision-making aid for future leasing agreements. Andreas Pfeiffer draws another, quite unexpected benefit from the Mobile Easykey software: "In the meantime, we have also recorded all devices requiring inspection, from telephones to roller shutters, and stored the inspection dates there. What used to be laboriously handled in various Excel lists can now be viewed immediately at every location and centrally."

Hans Christian Sproedt, the project planner at Rudolph Automotive, has also arrived at the headquarters in Baunatal. During the final meeting, he points out the importance of Mobile Easykey's cooperation with the forklift manufacturers. "Today, when we order a forklift truck, we can simply tick the box and order Mobile Easykey including the interface."

An interface for the industry

Volker Quirin then explains how the interface came about. "A good three years ago, we had our first contact with the VDI. They are working on an interface for the entire industry. We have also developed our own interface in close cooperation with Jungheinrich, Linde and Crown." In addition to simplified assembly, the advantage is the transfer of original data from the forklift truck, which would otherwise have to be generated via additionally installed hardware, Quirin continues.

"Despite everything, we shouldn't forget that it's always about the safety of our employees. We want to be better than the industry norm," concludes Hans Christian Sproedt at the end of the interview. "But of course it's also about costs. In addition to the reduction in violent damage, we have also noticed that the forklift fleet is growing more slowly than capacity utilization at our sites," says Sproedt. And there was another factor that favored the introduction of Mobile Easykey: "All data remains in-house and does not end up in any clouds."

Contact:Rudolph Logistik Gruppe GmbH & Co KG 34225 Baunatal Tel.: 05 61 / 49 91-0 E-Mail: [email protected] www.rudolph-log.com

Domnick + Müller GmbH & Co. KG 61381 Friedrichsdorf Phone: 0 61 72 / 95 66-16 E-mail: [email protected] www.mobileeasykey.de