How IOT helps Nexans generate substantial logistical cost reductions
When you envisage cable and the IOT you immediately think of infrastructure projects and networks of interconnected devices. You don’t associate cable with IOT in the form of tracking devices. Yet, Nexans, one of the world’s leading cable manufacturers, is embracing IOT and its technological wizardry to help with the logistical management of wooden or steel cable drums.
Working with industrial Internet of Thing specialists, Nexans has developed a solution to enable customers to track the location of their cable drums.
“The drums are used to transport cables from a factory to an industrial or construction site where they are stored before and after use. Once they’re empty, the cable drums are collected and sent back to the factory. This service is charged to the end-client as a rental per unit,” Thibault Goulin, Nexans Digital services manager tells Voltimum.
For major distributed service operators, this adds up to several million pounds a year, and Nexans spends almost €1 million a year on the logistics for retrieving stolen cable drums.
Real-time management and traceability
Nexans analysed where it could make the process more cost-effective and forensically examined it to the point where it can now locate equipment at any time to avoid loss or theft and realise substantial cost savings.
Thibault Goulin says: “Employing an industrial mobile tracking system by installing GPS sensors in a little box on each wooden cable drum they can locate the drums wherever they are – inside or outside the factory or even anywhere in the country.
“Using the tracker device also means they can provide additional details for customers, such as record the number of cables on each drum. This allows Nexans to calculate how much extra cable length is left on a drum and potentially reallocate it, and/or collect all empty cable drums to send back to factories.”
With theft of cable rife across the world, an onboard transmitter provides 24/7 monitoring that sends an alert when a cable drum is moved outside the authorised perimeter or at night.
Connectivity is a given nowadays and it is no different with cable drums. Sensors are connected via a network, such as Sigfox or LoRa, which send data to a platform, which Nexans and its clients can access.
Since its first introduction in 2016, Nexans’ customers can track the location of their cable drums with accuracy - reducing costs through improved efficiency and enhanced traceability.
Over a thousand of Nexans connected cable drums are already rolled out worldwide and the results, Thibault Goulin, Nexans Digital services manager, concludes are:
- Cost savings due to faster relocation of cable drums
- Efficient management.
- Traceability to ensure that the right cable is being used at the right location.
- Leftover cables re-used for other projects
- Potential reduction in the number of thefts.