Kautex Gains Global Visibility and Fleet Efficiency Across Manufacturing Centers

Background

As one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world, Kautex operates warehousing and manufacturing centers across more than 30 facilities in 13 countries. Managing forklifts and other powered industrial vehicles safely and efficiently at these dispersed locations posed challenges in visibility, safety and operator accountability.

The challenge

Kautex aimed to improve its safety, compliance, and utilization across its global manufacturing facilities. The company needed complete wireless visibility and automated monitoring of its industrial vehicles to help ensure that only trained, authorized operators were using equipment, inspections were performed electronically, and operations ran efficiently and safely.

The solution

Kautex implemented Powerfleet’s Enterprise on-site solution to its fleet of forklifts and material handling equipment, starting at its Detroit facility. The solution delivered complete wireless visibility and automated monitoring of industrial vehicles across its warehouse and manufacturing sites. By analyzing the utilization data collected by Powerfleet, Kautex was able to make data-driven decisions about fleet size and resource distribution.

Results

The results were tangible. At the first facility, Kautex reduced its fleet by over 10% after reviewing the utilization data. This optimization resulted in cost reductions exceeding $10,000 per year for each truck eliminated, encompassing the cost of the equipment and ongoing maintenance. Encouraged by these results, Kautex rapidly expanded the solution from a single site to more than eight locations across six countries and three continents in just over a year. 

Customer perspective

Beyond fleet optimization, Powerfleet’s safety features, including operator access control, electronic safety inspection checklists, and impact sensing, helped reduce impacts, accidents, and equipment damage at their facilities. Powerfleet’s centralized platform also enabled Kautex to aggregate data from multiple facilities within a single application, allowing for faster and more accurate decision-making across the organization.