Bennie Group get connected with MachineMax as data drives business growth

Understanding how each asset performs is critical to running a successful business when you operate a mixed fleet of over 500 machines, from large earthmovers to material handing units. With plant hire, contracting and equipment dealerships all part of the family run Bennie Group, there is a lot to manage for fourth generation Group MD, Matthew Ayres.

To find out more about its data journey Peter Haddock recently visited its head office in Northamptonshire on behalf of Construction Worx. He also helped the team connect some of its assets to the MachineMax telemetry driven fleet management solution they are rolling out across the business.

Matthew: "As a group we run quite a diverse fleet of equipment from the latest Cat D6 XE electric drive dozer to John Deere tractors, Bomag compactors, Volvo excavators and the Faresin all electric telehandler. And to keep all of these assets working hard, we have our own maintenance and repair workshops where we can perform major overhauls to equipment like our 2006 Cat 963C track loader.

"But like any business in our sector, to be successful, we not only need to ensure we have high levels of machine uptime, we also need to ensure machine utilisation levels are equally high. To do this, we recently restructured the group to pool our earthmoving, crushers, screeners and soil stabilisation equipment into our Bennie Plant rental business. This rents equipment to a range of customers and also now hires to our internal earthworks, ground engineering and soil stabilisation contracting division, Barton.

"This change paved the way to adopting a holistic approach to fleet management, allowing us to connect all of our assets. This also included those managed by our Bennie Equipment division, which specialises in material handling sales and rental. But we were still faced with the challenge of connecting each asset category into one solution to pull off the key data we needed, like operating hours, fuel burn, carbon emissions and location. And what surprised us, particularly with the material handling equipment, was how far behind the onboard telemetry systems and technology available for us to capture data was.

"This is one of the key reasons why we chose to work with MachineMax, as the business firstly can capture information from OEMs existing APIs through the GPS network. And secondly, if this is not possible, they have a very robust sensor with strong magnets that can be simply attached to a machine. This gives us a second option for not just the newer equipment that doesn't have APIs available, but also older units like our Cat 963C."

As soon as a machine from the Bennie Group is connected to the MachineMax platform, data is captured and fed into its cloud-based solution. Here it can be accessed from any connected smartphone, tablet or computer. There is even a mobile app that can be used by staff.

Matthew: "Collecting data is one thing, but turning it into useful information that we can act upon makes it so powerful. And this is where our digital journey comes together as over the past few years, we have upgraded our hardware and integrated other software solutions that streamline our business processes.

"This has already removed a lot of manual entry tasks where mistakes can be made and given us a much greater understanding of our business performance whilst enabling us to better integrate with our customers.

Knowing how impactful this process has been gave us the confidence to further accelerate our journey into other areas of the business. It also helped us to understand what we needed from an equipment solution which led to the MachineMax integration. What I really like about its approach is the simplicity of the dashboard solution it has created. It allows us to share the right information with our team in real-time and with customers in the future."

With the roll out of connecting machines underway, I wanted to find out from Matthew what the team was going to be able to do with the information collected from each machine.

Matthew: "As part of the process of finding a supplier to help us, we engaged with every aspect of the business and key customers to understand what information they wanted. For example, our maintenance team are interested in reviewing machine hours and planning in servicing and maintenance for our whole fleet. Whereas our contracts team are more interested in looking at machine utilisation and fuel burn for the equipment working on a particular job site.

"And when it came to customers, working on larger projects, the message was clear. They want to understand things like carbon emissions, fuel burn relative to activity, and idle time, all of which are critical moving forward. Having this information is particularly important when trying to measure productivity and efficiency. And, of course, with a significant increase in fuel prices, we will be working across the board to support key areas like operator training and realworld data-driven fleet management decisions.

"We see a greater movement into machine control to increase productivity and recognise that, in some cases, we will be able to compare running costs from one OEM brand to another. This, in turn, will inform our future equipment fleet purchasing and disposal decisions. Getting all our fleet connected is the next step that will make this all possible and, as we move forward, we will be able to use data to continue our business transformation. The ultimate goal is to use data-driven insights to deliver a better service to our customers whilst reducing our overall impact on the environment."

MachineMax is a key sponsor of the Get Connected Zone, alongside Plinx, in the Indoor Arena at the forthcoming Plantworx exhibition.