Once motorcycles leave the factory, they are stored and transported to dealers’ facilities on cradles. A shortage of cradles generates additional costs and production management problems. Cradles are not easy to track and are sometimes lost or stolen, which reduces manufacturers’ fleets and leads to delivery delays.
Gefco has developed a unique tailor-made solution to solve operational issues and streamline cradle management processes in Europe by partnering with Actility, a leading LoRaWAN solution provider, and Wakeo, the provider of a real-time visibility platform.
LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is a low power wireless protocol for wide area networks that allows devices to communicate with IoT applications over long-range wireless connections (up to 15 kilometers) with extended battery life (up to 10 years). Actility powers more than 50 public LoRaWAN service providers in over 30 countries, along with managed enterprise networks for dedicated vertical IoT solutions. Actility also enables multi-country geolocation solutions through its LoRaWAN roaming hub and Abeeway, its subsidiary that makes low power, long-life trackers.
Smart trackers have been provided by Actility and installed on the cradles to provide positions with an accuracy up to three meters and a battery lifetime of more than seven years. Tracker data is then collected via the LoRaWAN networks and analysed on the Wakeo platform. This platform updates the motorcycles’ estimated arrival time at the dealer’s facility in real time.
The platform also allows the user to locate the cradles, showing if and when they have been delayed. Automated alerts are sent to operational teams about delays. Thanks to this system, motorcycle manufacturers can make sure the initial transport plan is being followed, while being informed of possible delivery delays and the cradles’ return.
“The integration of these two innovative solutions will give our customers a comprehensive overview of their flows. They will benefit from real-time, predictive, cost-effective, energy-efficient and sustainable solutions for managing logistics resources and complex supply chains. This demonstrates the effectiveness of our innovation strategy and confirms the added value that our partnership with Techstars can bring to our customers,” commented Emmanuel Cheremetinski, Executive Vice-President Inland at Gefco.
