MHW Magazine News and stories from the Materials Handling Industry
S&L Catering, the Huddersfield-based firm that makes and delivers over eight million sandwiches a year to customers in the North of England and the Midlands, has fitted its chilled delivery fleet with SupaTrak, the vehicle tracking system developed by CMS Global Technologies of Swindon.
S&L, whose customers include a great many hospitals, universities and schools, chose SupaTrak because it wanted to make better use of its vehicles and being able to see where they are at any given moment is an important part of this process.
The basic SupaTrak system provides real-time location updates every 60 seconds and there is an option to reduce this to 30 seconds.
The company also knew that better visibility could also assist its track and trace commitment to the NHS, its largest customer, who require deliveries within a tight timeframe at multiple locations.
The system also provides greater security to its overall operation, and enables the company to work smarter.
“The pure tracking function is excellent. The system is well supported and does everything we asked of it,” says Peter Donachie, S&L's Logistics Coordinator.
“However, now that it is up and working we can see it has the potential to help our business in other ways, and we are working with CMS to introduce a number of system options, and to configure the reporting facility to more accurately reflect our working patterns,” he adds.
SupaTrak comes with a historic trail reporting function that enables users to see where vehicles have been, when they were there and the speed of travel, which many system users say they find very useful for resolving journey queries or disputes.
S&L aims to refine the reporting function to give more control, and to enhance the flexibility of its operations by fitting options such as route planning and the ability to contact drivers directly through the system. Other SupaTrak options include satellite navigation and full European mapping.
“Fortunately,” says Peter, “we chose a system that has the capability to do all these things and more, and which is fully capable of meeting and exceeding our expectations.”
For full details about SupaTrak and what it can do, along with an online demonstration, see www.supatrak.com
