Sealant stock management: a major challenge for tunnel construction
With more than 25 years of experience in the field of tunnels, with more than 4,500km laid, Condat has unique know-how and an international reputation in its sector. In particular, the company is a leader in the manufacturing and supply of tail seal greases, products designed for tunnel construction in wet areas. Tail seal greases are essential for tunneling especially in the event of water ingress, as job sites risk being delayed and, in the worst case, may even be submerged.
Condat delivers all over the world using 20-ton containers. Until now Condat’s sales teams worked with customers to estimate requirements, without being able to obtain precise information on sealant consumption.
"We needed a solution to prevent our tunnel boring machine customers from running out of sealant on their sites. In the life of a construction site, many parameters can speed up or slow down the consumption of this product. To satisfy our customers, we had to think of a way to find out about it, without having to contact someone on the worksites. We had the feeling that IoT was the right way to go, so we turned to delaware, our technology solutions partner of more than 23 years, to support us." explains Guy Chemisky, Director of Operations at Condat.
CondatLink started as a concept last November at the French edition of the DEL20, the delaware working group focused on innovation, where concrete cases and feedback are shared. In January, the project was launched: "We started this project together by working on an end-to-end strategy: from the ideas phase to the design of the applications. We put several people from the IoT ecosystem in touch with each other. Sigfox was chosen to support us during the implementation of this project and the design of the tracking and monitoring equipment", adds Baptiste Duriez, partner at delaware France.
Sigfox was chosen by Condat for its 0G network covering more than 70 countries and regions and its proposal to fully integrate the solution into Condat's SAP environment.
"We were very delighted by the maturity of the thinking. The Condat and delaware teams had carried out an in-depth study of the service experience expected for users and how the solution would fit into production. Even the notion of return on investment with stock management had been analyzed. We were therefore able to bring our expertise to the project to introduce a solution very quickly", says Patrick Cason, Managing Director of Sigfox France.
"This project was carried out thanks to a dozen-strong team from Condat, delaware and Sigfox. By combining all these skills, the spirit of innovating together and the desire to co-develop with our suppliers, we managed to finalize this project in a very short time frame and in the middle of a period of lockdown", adds Guy Chemisky.