CGT Caterpillar
Reducing Errors and Improving the Customer Experience for Italy’s Largest Heavy Equipment Rental Company
In Italy, Compagnia Generale Trattori (CGT) is almost synonymous with the world-leading Caterpillar® brand of equipment for construction, mining, civil engineering and industry. With a 75-year history as a Caterpillar dealer, CGT sells, rents and services a complete line of products through its 26 branches in Central and Northern Italy, boasting annual revenues around 400 million Euros (US$560 million).
The Challenge:
An increasing number of companies are opting to rent equipment when they need it, instead of buying it and having it sit idle some of the time. In fact, CGT saw a 600% increase in rental contracts between 1995 and 2004. Unfortunately, as the rate of rentals increased, so did the number of errors the company experienced—mainly gaps in the inventory database used to arrange rental details regarding what equipment was located at which branch, and what equipment was already on hire at a customer location. CGT set two key goals:
- to achieve zero errors in managing the equipment rental inventory,
- to reduce the time required to get needed equipment to a customer site to only two days.
The Solution:
- CGT implemented an RFID solution. Every item in the CGT rental fleet—totaling almost 1,500 machines, as well as a variety of accessories— is equipped with a passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag.
- Each employee working in the rental check-in/check-out department is equipped with a Psion Teklogix WORKABOUT PRO handheld computer to allow them to scan the RFID tag on every item coming in or going out in a given day.
- The handheld computers then transmit the information in real-time through a WiFi network directly to the rental management database on a secure CGT Intranet server.
The Benefits:
- The CGT equipment rental team knows exactly what items are available at any given time.
- Details of every rental contract are uploaded to the central server via the Psion Teklogix WORKABOUT PRO® handheld computers, making inventory, billing and service scheduling easier and more efficient.
- CGT is now able to concentrate on customer needs, providing increased flexibility, improved service and top-quality machines.
