There is a lot to gain in terms of efficiency

The Peute Group is an international company that focuses on recycling paper and plastics. Every year, it processes more than 1.5 million tons of raw materials. This new raw material is distributed to different factories worldwide, such as France and Germany in Europe, but also Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam.

The raw materials that the Peute Group deals with are transported in containers. Thus, trucks come and go at the facility in Alblasserdam. Around 200 trucks arrive daily, weigh their load on the weighbridge, and proceed to the production facility to unload imported cargo. All of this is done at a 50,000 m2 location that did not exist before last year.

All one premise

We used to have separate facilities. The office was not in the same place as the production facility, and the weighing bridge was next to the production facility. Now this is all one premise’, says Patrick Hoogenberg, ICT manager at The Peute Group. But the single location was not the end goal for the company. Once it was established, they focused on improving efficiency. ‘We started thinking about a ticketing system, a traffic light or a corresponding system with the terminals we work with. When we saw what CERTUS offered, we knew this is what we needed.’

‘When we saw what CERTUS offered, we knew this is what we needed.’

CERTUS has provided the facility in Alblasserdam with automated gates. When a truck arrives at the gate, the system already knows where it’s coming from. If the truck is indeed expected, the gate opens and the truck continues its way to the weighing bridge, without any human intervention. At the weighing bridge, the CERTUS system collects the data and sends it to the system of The Peute Group. Here it is checked, and if correct, the truck can continue to the loading place.

‘In the past, somebody used to receive the truck driver, give him a cup of coffee while the paperwork was checked. Then, somebody stood next to the weighing bridge to see if the maximum weight was not exceeded, before the driver could continue to the production facility. It is nice to have this interaction, but if you do this 50 times per day it is not efficient’, explains Johan Beeckman, Manager Business Control & BI at the group. There still is some administrative work for the truck driver to take care of, but the whole procedure is now much shorter.

‘There still is some administrative work for the truck driver to take care of, but the whole procedure is now much shorter.’

Beeckman and Hoogenberg also point out the improved capacity distribution of the production facility, and a more complete data set. ‘We know in advance what the driver will come to load or unload. There can be no mistake about it. We also used to have drivers that came a day early, or to the wrong location all along. This does not happen anymore’, says Hoogenberg. Naturally, the improvements lead to improved turnaround times, which in turn increases the capacity of the facility. ‘It is difficult to compare the numbers at this point because the market demand in Europe has fallen dramatically, but in busy times, we could handle up to 400 trucks per day’, says Beeckman.

Mind switch

Gradually, everybody is starting to see the benefits of the upgrade, he continues. ‘In the beginning there were some people that were less positive. They might have been afraid to lose their job, or they did not understand the benefits of the project. They wondered why we were doing all of this. We took the time to explain the benefits and how everything works to everyone, and gradually things started to fall in place. We did not need to let anybody go, but there were changes in the tasks of people. For example, employees that used to be at the gate are now at the weighing bridge, or they got an administrative task. If this is not exactly what an employee wants to do, we look at other possibilities together. We do not want to replace people with this technology.’

As a raw material processing facility Peute is a unique customer of CERTUS. Asked if it is the first within its own sector, Hoogenberg says that there aren’t any similar facilities in the Netherlands in the first place. ‘Not in the sense that production and trade is combined in one and the same facility. We are the only ones doing this in Europe on this scale. In combination with CERTUS’ solution, that puts us in a unique position.’

When it comes to automation, it usually concerns ports and terminals, the two acknowledge. ‘But it is also quite interesting for distribution centers to look into this. There is a lot to gain in terms of efficiency.’ For now, the team in Alblasserdam is satisfied. But they never sit still. ‘We may want to make our time slots even more efficient. This may be a next step.’