Reibungslos Systeme now ships every machine that leaves the factory with a ToolSense QR code, turning a one-time paper delivery into a permanent digital record that follows the asset wherever it goes in the world.
Marko Hache has spent more than 26 years in the German cleaning industry, selling cleaning machines and working in floor cleaning across many stations of the trade. Reibungslos Systeme GmbH is his own venture: a manufacturer and dealer operation in the DACH region. Since mid-last year the company has taken on direct sales of cleaning machines, and since the start of December it manufactures under its own label together with E&N Montage GmbH, a family firm that produced large volumes for another brand for two decades. The team is now building out a dealer and service network across the region.
The starting point
As a manufacturer, Reibungslos Systeme is obliged to supply documentation with every machine: instruction protocols, manuals, CE conformity, spare-parts drawings. The problem, in Hache's experience, was what happened next. Once a machine was delivered, there was a delivery note with one location and then the machine effectively vanished until something went wrong. Who has the machine, who used it last, where the paperwork went, none of it was traceable, because anything handed over on paper was usually lost a short time later.
Why ToolSense
Hache first saw ToolSense at the CMS trade fair in 2019 and never lost contact with it over the years, having watched manufacturer-specific fleet systems come and go since the early 2000s. The deliberate decision last year was to fit every machine leaving the works, anywhere in the world, with a ToolSense QR code, applied twice: once on the type plate and once in a more easily accessible spot. ToolSense gives Reibungslos Systeme one platform to connect asset management and field service across its own-label machines without locking customers into a single brand.
Things really happened to me last year where I'd say I'd like it like this and that, and it was already implemented during the conversation. That flexibility is enormous fun.
Marko Hache · Managing Director, Reibungslos Systeme
Operational impact
The QR code carries the full data package that still ships on paper, but now also digitally: who the service partner is, where the machine was delivered, the manual, training videos, and, depending on the customer's wishes, spare-parts ordering, spare-parts drawings and service tickets. An optional IoT module, the "black box," can pull live machine data on top. For the people who manage the equipment, the dealers Reibungslos works with, and for Reibungslos itself, the value goes beyond registration: customers can run object audits and inspections in various areas, and they enter a relationship with ToolSense in their own right.
What's next
Hache sees the cleaning sector as still in its infancy on digitalisation, where many operators do not know where their equipment is, how it is being used, or whether quality problems trace back to a machine that never actually ran. As interfaces mature and the flood of machine data gets channelled, he expects that data to feed future costing and even machine development, deciding which machine sizes are over- or under-used. His advice to others: name one person to own the rollout, because it is a full-time job, not a side task; take staff along by showing them the everyday benefit; then start in one place and roll out step by step. The payoff once processes are in place, he argues, is too large to put a single number on.
