Sonepar: Data instead of speculation

The electrical wholesaler Sonepar uses a fleet of around 1,330 industrial trucks. The Mobile Easykey fleet management system is used for a large part of this. Based on the data obtained, the fleet manager can identify insights into optimisation potential within the entire forklift fleet and make appropriate decisions.

Electric goods ordered by 8 p.m.: Next day delivery. The logistical effort that Sonepar makes is immense in order to store, stock and deliver more than 100,000 different items in a semi-automated manner. In the largest of the seven logistics centers near Augsburg alone, 450 colleagues work in three shifts and pick around 44,000 items for around 20,000 customer orders – every day. Because “you can’t do without people” says Sascha Christ, Head of the Augsburg Logistics Centre at Sonepar Deutschland GmbH. “For example, the qualitative check of incoming goods cannot be automated as things stand at present,” Christ continues. “Here we are dependent on the valuable manual work with proper and professional visual inspection. And that’s a good thing.”

Christ has been working at Sonepar for three years. Previously, he was Regional Manager at Crown Forklift and Sales and Center Manager at Toyota Material Handling. After many years with industrial truck and commercial vehicle manufacturers, he switched to the customer side and is now responsible for around 1,330 industrial trucks from five different manufacturers. “When I started at Sonepar, different Excel lists were kept at each location. Nobody had an overview of the entire Germany-wide fleet.”

In the logistics centers in Dortmund and Frankfurt, some devices were already equipped with the Mobile Easykey fleet management system from the Friedrichsdorf-based provider of the same name. Christ then took care of the Germany-wide roll-out. His colleague Gernot Lernbeiß, Head of General Organisation, Sonepar Germany and responsible for the forklift fleet in the logistics centers in Augsburg and Franconia, adds: “The internal environment has changed significantly in recent years. Nothing is decided on the basis of gut feeling. Numbers, data, facts are becoming more and more important.”

Savings through facts

„Mobile Easykey hat uns qualitativ weit nach vorn gebracht“, so Christ. “We now have data and no longer have to speculate or laboriously gather information from dozens of Excel spreadsheets.”

Sonepar uses the Mobile Easykey hardware on 365 devices. Currently, around 830 devices are recorded in the software. In future, the fleet management system will always be present for replacement procurements. With the help of the software, it is now possible to analyse the workload across several locations. “This supports us currently and in the future with investment projects and shows us optimisation potential within the entire forklift fleet.”

In addition to the analysis, the functions of driver and equipment management are important for the electrical wholesaler. The remarkably systematic database contains driving authorisations and commissions, training courses, UVV dates, operating instructions and technical data sheets. “Yes, the beginning was labour intense. But now everything is running. And we are making our contribution to further digitisation at Sonepar. Not for its own sake, but for more transparency and flexibility and ultimately to save money,” said Christ about his experiences with Mobile Easykey, the system that, in his opinion, “provides more data than any other universal and manufacturer-independent fleet management system Market.”

Sustainability as a corporate goal

“The most sustainable is the forklift that we no longer buy. But just as we will continue to need people in the future, they will also use forklifts. And we want to operate our industrial trucks as efficiently and climate-friendly as possible,” says Christ, reporting on a pilot project that will soon start at the Augsburg site. Two fuel cell-based industrial trucks will be tested here for two months. If the test is successful, the electrical wholesaler can wave additional standby devices during multi-shift operation, as batteries no longer need to be charged.

The planning goes even further. With a 2.5 MW photovoltaic system and its own electrolyzer, Sonepar plans to produce green hydrogen and hopes to use it to replace the diesel emergency generator. “We want to go green from the moment we receive goods,” says Christ, specifying the electrical wholesaler’s ambitions. “And we want to use the CO2 calculator in the Mobile-Easykey software to make the CO2 emissions of industrial trucks transparent. Less climate-damaging vehicles are promoted by the EU.

With Mobile Easykey it is possible to capture, log and validate this data. This is the perfect basis for applying for appropriate subsidies.” And for climate balances to be created in the future, Christ emphasises the possibility of making time-period comparisons in the software.

Fleet management throughout Europe

“We have proven that the investment in Mobile Easykey has paid off. A future European deployment is quite conceivable,” says Christ, describing the future cooperation and talking about his vision of a device pool: “For Germany, I am striving for a centrally managed equipment park.” Industrial trucks will then no longer be purchased from the individual locations, but rented from a pool. “Because now we know the actual needs and so we help all locations to operate more efficiently and sustainably.”

Trade magazine f+h, September 2024
You can find the current issue of the magazine here (German language)