Press Release January 2022

Bocholt, January 19, 2022

The steel wholesaler Friedrich Kicherer has replaced five different technology providers by only one telematics system called TISLOG. Furthermore, the company saved interfaces and facilitated its administration. TISLOG can also be extended by other modules.

At Kicherer it cannot be imagined working without modern telematics systems in order to manage the vehicle fleet. GPS locating, order management or the overview of the available driving times: The technology does not only relieve the truck drivers and the expeditor at their work, instead it also improves the service and the transparency to the customers.

85 own trucks
The openness to innovative solutions at Kicherer led to five different systems that had to be used by different departments of the company. “Order management, locating, analysis of driving times as well as the administration of SIM cards and tablets were managed by different providers”, reminds Michael Röther who is in charge of the vehicle fleet that includes 85 own trucks. These are divided by four units at four locations. 1000 t steel are brought from Ellwangen to the customers throughout in Germany every day.

The five telematics systems ended in a higher effort of organization, various interfaces and different contact persons. “Many systems mean many potential sources of error”, says Röther. This resulted in an analysis of the problem to find out which provider had to be contacted when something went wrong. Because of this, Kicherer was looking for a holistic solution which included all telematics functions in one system.

Integrated mobile device management
“We went to trade fairs to look for suitable providers and got to know TIS”, reports Tobias Abele who managed the project. “The solution TISLOG includes a mobile order management, exact analysis of driving styles and the download, the saving and the analysis of the tachometer as well as the driver cards”, summarizes Abele. Furthermore, TIS offers an administration of SIM cards and the own developed mobile device management (TISLOG MDM) that allows an easy installation of updates on the drivers tablets.

TISLOG MDM was optimized for the requirements of the logistics industry. Therefore, the TIS GmbH offers an alternative to third party solutions. The mobile device management can be used in order to administer all mobile devices and belongs to the TISLOG portfolio. The solution can be used for the wireless transmission of updates on different mobile devices as well as the data saving and the inventory of various devices.

“The advantage of TIS is that the solution is permanently extended by new useful modules”, says Luca Röhrer, who did a training as IT specialist for system integration at Kicherer. As an example, he mentions the app for the pre-trip inspection and the documentation of the load securing with integrated photo function.

Intensive on-road test
TISLOG was tested on-road before Kicherer decided to implement the system. For this, 15 trucks were equipped with Samsung tablets (Galaxy Tab Active 2), telematicboxes truck and mobile printers. The boxes include a high-level GPS receiver and SIM cards. They are connected via FMS interface to the CAN Bus of the truck and the digital tachometer. “Thereby our expeditors get reliable data of the current driving, working and rest times”, adds Röther. The handling and analysis of the data of the tachometer work through the portal TISLOG office Infodesk and from there to the tour planning software Pracar by Wanko which is used at Kicherer.

Automatic notification
The planned tours will then be sent from Pracar to the TISLOG app on the drivers tablets. The drivers get exact and unambigious data which can be easily transferred to the tied navigation system. “During the whole tour, the drivers get orders step by step”, notices Abele. This makes the working process easier, especially for foreign drivers as the orders are translated automatically in the specific language.

Because of the automatic notifications, TISLOG improves also the communication to the customers. Kicherer generates an email with a precise time indication and a download link for the delivery note and sends it to its customers. In this way the receipt can be done quickly and the holding times can be reduced.

After the testing phase, the TISLOG system “was rated from all involved participants as good”. That is the reason why TISLOG was introduced at Kicherer during the turn of the years 2020/2021. But first TISLOG had to be adapted to the needs of the four different vehicle fleets. The following categories can be distinguished: freight forwarding, bending, steel center and industrial liaison trade. For this, TISLOG learned to receive emails, to print delivery notes in the trucks and to buy vignettes.

Next steps are already planned
“The project ran to our complete satisfaction and our contact persons at TIS were available at any time even during the festive season and new year”, underline Abele and Röther, who want to expand the telematics system continously. Currently, Kicherer plans to implement the digital load exchange, the digital driver’s license control, the load and unload scanning as well as the digital signature.