Volvo Car Gent makes supply chain more efficient with IoT solution from Simac and Sensolus

More than 200,000 cars are produced annually at Volvo Car Gent. This makes it one of the largest production plants of the famous car brand. During the launch of a new model or model-year change, cars don’t always follow the normal flow, sometimes making it more difficult to find a finished, specific car quickly. “The business asked us to look for a tool that would allow us to track our cars quickly,” says Patrick Van Peteghem, Infrastructure Site Manager at Volvo Car Gent. “Simac and Sensolus had an ideal solution for us.”

Simac has been one of Volvo Cars’ regular integration partners for nearly 20 years. The collaboration with Sensolus, a growth company based in Ghent, shows that permanent partners can also be innovative. Kristoff Van Rattinghe, CEO and co-founder of Sensolus, explains: “For five years it has been our mission to connect and transform assets that are not connected to the Internet in a simple way into digital assets – the creation of ‘digital twins’. At Sensolus, we specialize in optimizing business processes through these digital twins, the so-called Industrial Internet of Things.” Sensolus’ other customers include Airbus, AGC and AB InBev.

For the project with Volvo, Sensolus supplied sensors that consume little energy and are remotely programmable. This makes it easy to make changes when circumstances or processes change. Simac ICT Belgium took care of the entire delivery and integration, including integration with a number of existing IT systems at Volvo Cars. “Internet of Things is one of our main spearheads,” says Johan Diels, director of the Integration business unit at Simac. “In doing so, we already gained extensive experience on projects at home and abroad.”

For Volvo, this pilot project, implemented in less than a month, represents a very significant improvement. “We were looking for a quick solution, and we found it,” says Van Peteghem. “The integration of the IoT solution with our current quality system was flawless. Now we know where a car is within five minutes.”

During the pilot project, a total of about a thousand sensors were used to track Volvo V60 models. Of course, other models produced in Ghent, currently the V40 and XCV40, can also be easily equipped with a tracking system. “One of our strengths is just the scalability of our IoT solution,” confirmed Van Rattinghe.

Cars can also be tracked not only in parking lots, but also indoors. For example, Sensolus’ trackers can determine if cars are idling too long and at what point in the production chain a car is delayed. That certainly opens up possibilities into the future.

“The Ghent pilot project is also being monitored internationally, for possible other applications where the supply chain can be optimized,” adds Peter Vanderlinden, Sales and Business Development Lead in Industry 4.0, IoT, AI and Blockchain at Simac ICT Belgium.