Heartland Holden, the leading Western Sydney Holden dealers, were seeking a faster and more accurate real time vehicle tracking system through their workshop and quarantine area for better reporting to their head office and branches.
Group stock manager Craig Amos and IT manager David Cox drew up their specifications and selected Bar Code Data Systems (BCDS) to design and implement the system “Car Track”.
“Car Track” is designed to import data from Heartland Holden’s existing system enabling the job sheet to be bar coded not only for the job type, i.e. mag wheels to be fitted, but what type of wheels need to be fitted.
Customer and car details are displayed on the job sheet allowing the technician to cross reference car details to actual details.
The application provides real-time tracking of vehicles arriving on-site, through Heartlands workshop, by zone and quarantine area.
The system sends email alerts to nominated motor vehicle dealers at set times, configurable within the software showing the status of the vehicle within the workshop.
The software uses a Microsoft Access database at the back end and RF Lynk to provide real-time interface to barcode scanners allocated at various zones in the workshop.
As the vehicles arrive at the workshop a job sheet is printed with barcode and human readable identifiers for each particular car. The operator scans his user ID, and the system records the time, date and job.
Then the operator scans the vehicle ID followed by each job ID. Upon completion of the job the operator re-scans the job ID barcode.
Steve Williams the General Manager of BCDS recommended the new Denso R/F series 7500 units for the project.
They were programmed to scan a bar coded job menu chart with bar code titles like: user ID, start and finish times, vehicle ID, deal no, job descriptions such as, window tints, mats, tow bar etc.
These details are immediately transmitted to the host computer. From there emails are automatically transmitted at programmed times throughout the day to the various branches advising them of their vehicle order and delivery status.
Reports are produced comparing the standard hours with the actual hours of work in progress. Other areas to gain benefit from the system include:
- Stores stock control
- Stock takes of vehicle at dealer ships
- Controlling the accuracy of items fitted to vehicles.
The Denso units have worked superbly. The operators have found them easy to use and Craig and David are delighted at the reduction in the time it used to take to manually check the location and status of their pre delivered service vehicles.
The vehicle status and tracking system is available from BCDS identification Technologies.