JLR

Insight

JLR Solihull desperately needed to transition from a manual paper-based system to a digital one for managing the movement and tracking of over 1850 vehicles a day. The aim being to reduce pressure on resource, alleviate unnecessary costs and improve efficiency. 

They wanted a simple and effective way to digitise the tracking process of moving cars from production to parking spaces to collection by carriers.

Idea

The Image Plus development team designed and built an intuitive app based on an algorithm of twenty+ rules covering things like time spent in the compound, priority vehicle, size, weight and destination. 

The app enables drivers to scan a VN number to be directed to the best bay for the vehicle they were driving. It stores data and knows where every bay is, including which are empty and when. It also monitors driver activity, making sure workload is spread appropriately across every employee – a vital component because across one day this spans three shifts, with forty drivers per shift – that’s a lot of people, cars and handover points!

We built an algorithm that cleverly calculates where the car should move within seconds of the driver scanning or requesting information. We made sure it can tell the driver how and where to move cars to super efficiently, minimising the time spent on each move.

The app meant a large amount of data needed to be stored on the server, so it was essential that everything was able to run smoothly and as fast as possible. To make this happen, we produced the application on a serverless environment, so the server would adapt to usage and add ram on higher stress points when needed or lower at quiet times (such as the weekend), for optimal efficiency.

Impact

Moving from a paper-based system to a super-efficient app has revolutionised how the company handles those 1850 cars every day. It’s made life easier for everyone in the team and significantly reduced the pressure on the business.