Bosch is Digitalizing Construction Sites

Bosch is Digitalizing Construction Sites
Bosch

German tech company Bosch launched an asset tracing solution, or Bosch TRACI for short. It is a robust, IoT-based connectivity solution for fleet management that can be easily retrofitted to existing specialized vehicles for consturction work or agriculture.

“Bosch TRACI provides all the relevant data needed to enhance the efficiency and utilization rate of any vehicle fleet,“ says Jan Philipp Büchner, the product manager responsible for Bosch TRACI. “It helps keep wait, search, and transportation times to a minimum.“ The Bosch solution comprises a sensor box, cloud-based evaluation software, and a wide array of digital services.

Productivity growth is substantially lower in the construction industry than elsewhere, and the reasons for this include the growing difficulty of keeping track of all pieces of machinery on increasingly larger and more complex building projects. Bosch TRACI helps improve how much the machinery is used, while speeding up the process of materials distribution. Every vehicle is first equipped with a Bosch TRACI tag, a compact sensor box with its own power supply that captures the vehicle’s position, state of motion, as well as a lot of other data.

The data is encrypted and transmitted via a LoRaWAN network to the Bosch IoT cloud, where it is decrypted. Customers and users can then access the sensor data, integrating it into their existing software systems for logistics, scheduling, and operations planning. Of course, the data can also be visualized directly on a smartphone app or in a web browser.

In agricultural scenarios, the tracing solution dovetails with existing agricultural machinery systems as well as with the sensor-based monitoring solutions provided by the Bosch startup Deepfield. It can also be used to record the operating hours of coupled machines and to determine when the operators should be reminded of important maintenance work. That can substantially lower the risk of breakdowns and expensive repairs.