”Unrivalled Range of Functions“

Chefs Culinar supplies customers in the hotel and catering trade, in corporate and group catering with around 25,000 items from the food and nonfood sectors. The firm has eight branches and 23 support points in Germany alone. Punctual, reliable deliveries are crucial for the success of the company. Ralf Schliestedt, head of central logistics, reports on his experience with the IAV on-board computer system.

Mr. Schliestedt, how important is the onboard computer in your everyday work?

Schliestedt: The system with the on-board computer and mobile handheld device has been installed in around 1,000 trucks operating throughout Europe and is used by about 1,500 drivers. This alone shows that the on-board computer system is of central importance for our operations with huge simplifications of our everyday processes.

The range of functions includes, for example, automatic imports of the driver card data and the truck mass memories. Furthermore, we have also been able to introduce paperless handling of most customer-related processes. Drivers use the handheld device to record the data for customer deliveries; the data are transferred via Bluetooth to the on-board computer in the truck and from there via UMTS to our backend system, called “Chefs Culinar Logistics Fleetview”. Among others, Fleetview shows and monitors current data such as position, route, delivery status and temperatures. Our branches also have access to the archived data at all times.

What other purpose does the backend serve? 

It also manages around 4,000 vehicle master datasets for our fleet which also includes cars, vans and industrial trucks. The master data are maintained in great detail. Besides dimensions and weight, this also includes the expiry date of the fire extinguisher or the position of the side doors, besides many other partly country-specific features.

Why did you opt for IAV’s solution?

In 2008 we were looking for a general contractor who could supply us a solution from a single source. IAV was in a position to do this; what’s more, the range of functions the IAV system offered was simply unrivalled in those days. For us this was a crucial aspect because we wanted to integrate as many functions as possible in one single device, including navigation, phone, tour planning and much more.

What do you like about the latest generation of on-board computers?

The higher processing speed, the larger memory and the many functions that are now possible on the basis of Windows 7, including the possibility of displaying PDF documents. In future we intend to introduce a paperless returns handling function and offer our customers the possibility of tracking deliveries online. This is only possible thanks to smooth cooperation between the on-board computer and the backend, as well as offering the opportunity of integrating new functions without any problems.