The challenge
Ready mix concrete is produced by mixing a number of materials including rock, sand, water and cement to a specific recipe depending upon the customer’s application. Across Denmark and Norway, Unicon operates approximately 80 batch plants all capable of producing a wide range of concrete recipes.
Historically, each plant would have a number of trucks assigned to it depending upon the region in which it was located. Ultimately, Unicon wanted to break down the geographical boundaries and allow trucks to operate across the network of plants.
The solution
The AMCS solution allows Unicon to manage all the elements associated with the successful delivery of ready-mix concrete in a real-time and in on-line environment. In addition to ensuring tight delivery windows could be met, the new system has the capability to manage constantly changing orders as a result of a range of factors including weather, delays with trades or other issues which may have affected progress on site.
The increased flexibility would increase truck availability and improve the ability to meet delivery windows. As concrete has a relatively short shelf life it would also mean that more loads would arrive in optimal condition and reduce the potential for loads changing the quality whilst in transit.
The results
Unicon has increased the number of deliveries per truck per day by 20- 25% and saw a 1-5% increase in revenue resulting from more accurate charging of waiting time.
System Coordinator at Unicon, Hans-Christian Wattum, says “AMCS Concrete Planner has supported us in developing a highly efficient and flexible delivery model which has significantly increased the productivity of our fleet. The increased automation of our systems and adoption of mobile technology has significantly improved our ability to capture additional costs such as waiting time and ensure it is billed fairly and accurately.”
Learn more
Download the case study and learn about all the benefits and results that Unicon has achieved by implementing the AMCS Intelligent Optimisation solution.