Walter Straßenbau is moving its entire machine and equipment management out of a sprawling Excel workbook and into a single platform, so the workshop can see where every machine is, what has been done to it, and which inspections are due.
Walter Straßenbau KG is a mid-market road-building and civil-engineering firm in Swabia, southern Germany, with around 100 employees. Nils Obst is the deputy workshop manager and has been with the company for twelve years, looking after maintenance, parts and equipment across two sites, one in southern Germany and one in Saxony.
The starting point
Before ToolSense, everything lived in one giant Excel file that Nils had built himself: a start screen linking to per-machine overviews, then into individual machine files with histories, frequently needed parts and more. It worked, but it was cumbersome, mainly because two sites had to share the same workbook. "When one location has the file open, I can't save here, and if I have it open and they save, it saves as a copy, so we always had different data states and somewhere data loss," Nils explains. Inspections were tracked separately again: TÜV, safety checks and tachograph checks were all run out of a Google calendar.
There was an operational cost beyond the data, too. The dispatcher would spend time hunting for machines because no one knew where they were until he had phoned around and someone finally said, "I've got it on the site."
Why ToolSense
Nils went looking for a replacement at bauma. He wrote down the relevant vendors, walked the show stand to stand, and ended up at ToolSense. The appeal was consolidation: one platform for the whole operation instead of a fragile workbook and a calendar, with the ability to log maintenance, UVV inspections and machine histories in one place, and for several people to work in it at once.
When one location has the Excel file open, I can't save here. We always had different data states and somewhere data loss. We needed something that simply works better.
Nils Obst · Head of Maintenance, Walter Straßenbau KG
Operational impact
The rollout started in the workshop and with the low-loader drivers, and Walter Straßenbau is deliberately taking it step by step. Even early on, the everyday benefits are clear: the team can see where a machine is and what has been done to it, and UVV safety inspections have become far simpler because they can now be completed on the construction site directly from a phone. Wartung and inspection records that once lived on handwritten notes and in a calendar are now digital and attached to the asset.
What's next
The goal is to have every machine and every piece of equipment in ToolSense, down to electrical tools, ladders, gates and lifting platforms, each carrying a QR code. Nils wants to issue a list at the start of each month showing exactly which maintenance and inspections are due, and to let foremen scan an asset's QR code on site to show a safety coordinator that a check has been done. The same transparency is meant to end the dispatcher's machine hunts: foremen can see where equipment is and coordinate directly. His advice to others is to prepare the data well and start small. "Take it slower, do it properly, move forward in small steps, and bring everyone along."
