Glass supplier is Allied with aide for on-board PC needs
Luxury glass packaging supplier Allied Glass has installed on-board commercial vehicle PCs from aide automotive on its forklift truck fleet, in order to help manage its stock movement operations.
The company, which makes glass containers for a raft of international brands, stores most of its stock in a Leeds warehouse, moving products by forklift truck.
The loading of each product onto a forklift truck is recorded by the driver scanning the product’s barcode using a wireless barcode scanner. This device transmits the barcode information to a PC on-board the forklift truck, which runs a bespoke internally developed programme. This processes the data and transmits it to the company’s back-office servers, in real time, over Wi-Fi.
Allied reviewed the CV-PC from aide because it was unhappy with its existing on-board computers, which were tablet-based. The main issue was that the tablets had very poor Wi-Fi performance, resulting in frequent network dropouts as the forklifts moved around the warehouse. This caused delays in goods reaching their intended destination, which in turn was having a negative effect on the site’s productivity.
The solution was a commercial vehicle PC combined with dual high-gain Wi-Fi antennas mounted on the forklift’s roof. In addition, a 10.4” touch-sensitive screen was mounted in the forklifts’ cab.
Russell Bavester of Allied’s IT team said: “We are very pleased with this solution; CV-PC has significantly improved our Wi-Fi connectivity. These vehicle computers easily outperforms our existing solution even when the same antennas are used, and our existing barcode scanners work seamlessly. We have also been able to free up a bit of room in the cab, as the previous tablet was very bulky.”
aide automotive offers a wide range of vehicle PC systems compatible with all types of fleet, including trucks, trailers, vans, buses, coaches and cars. Applications include haulage, passenger vehicles, utilities, security, executive transport and emergency services.
