Dethleffs Tracks Parking Lots Without Trackers

It wasn't quite like looking for a needle in a haystack, but finding one of the motorhome specialist Dethleffs's 4,000 vehicles on its 280,000 square metre site in Isny proved to be a time-consuming and costly undertaking. Depending on the equipment, employees move the vehicles – from the chassis to the finished recreational vehicle – 10 to 15 times across the company premises, which could accommodate 40 football pitches. It gets really tricky when the fleet is completely snowed in during the winter months and the chassis are often no longer visible to the naked eye.

Until a year ago, Dethleffs used outdated offline hand scanners to find and record the right recreational vehicle in the fleet's parking area. This only worked because experienced employees knew their fleet and the approximate location of individual vehicles. Thanks to paper lists with information about each vehicle, they knew in which of the several hundred-metre-long rows they had to search for the vehicle. Once found, the employees recorded the vehicle using the device and then transferred the data to a computer via a USB connection. This was an extremely cumbersome process, which sometimes led to production stoppages during inventories.

Efficient digital fleet tracking was needed, and it had to be as cost-effective as possible, to speed up vehicle location significantly and to facilitate just-in-time production. The solution was an app-based tracking solution from SYFIT, a Telekom joint venture, and a digital scanner from Telekom partner Zebra. They replace paper and offline scanners. In addition to the backend the startup SYFIT programmed jointly with Telekom an app specially designed to meet Dethleffs’ requirements, the most important of which are precise GPS vehicle location and ease of use for drivers – all as inexpensively as possible. Parking lots are now located swiftly, easily and efficiently using the tracking app and the Web-based management portal.

Dethleffs did not need to invest heavily in trackers or beacons. When a driver parks the chassis, the finished caravan or mobile home, he scans the barcode on the consignment note and confirms the vehicle and its position. The SYFIT app relays the mobile scanner’s GPS coordinates to the backend automatically and on the basis of this information the vehicle can then be located precisely by scanner or PC. This solution reduces the cost of fleet management substantially and production continues without interruption during inventories. Thanks to the app and to GPS tracking the system records the entire on-site vehicle fleet at the touch of a button. For Dethleffs it is a low-cost, customized solution. Fleet management and drivers now deliver vehicles so on schedule to the assembly line that just-in-time production is possible. And lists generated for inventories are available for auditing faster.

The solution has triggered interest at other Erwin Hymer Group locations so that rollout is either planned or already under way there. Dethleffs, SYFIT and Telekom are also jointly planning a technical upgrade, switching from QR codes to Bluetooth technology and thereby to further process improvements.