LEONHARD WEISS, one of Germany's large construction firms, turned to ToolSense to close the gap between inspecting its machines and actually making that documentation available on site, replacing data silos with one vendor-neutral system its crews can use at the push of a button.
LEONHARD WEISS is a classic German family business, founded in 1900, still family-led into its fourth generation after 122 years, with over 6,000 employees. As Director of Machine Technology, Ralf Lüddemann is responsible for supplying jobsites with mobility, machine technology, and the equipment they need. His department owns the whole lifecycle around machinery: procurement, operation, and the safety that operation requires.
The starting point
The company was strong on the physical side and weak on documentation. Every machine was inspected on schedule and came out of the workshops fully checked, but the records weren't available in a way that worked on the jobsite. Site managers couldn't access inspection documents on demand. The recurring needs (scheduling inspections, carrying them out, documenting them, and above all making proof visible to the people responsible on site) were tangled in multiple data silos and duplicate record-keeping, where everyone tried to close the documentation gap for themselves.
Why ToolSense
Lüddemann had been watching ToolSense for about three years; in 2021 a very large, multi-year jobsite gave both sides a clear requirements catalog, and the fit was ideal. The decisive reasons were independence and function. With a huge fleet spanning every type and brand, he was convinced that tying the company to individual manufacturer solutions would be a mistake, and that data sovereignty had to stay with LEONHARD WEISS rather than handing one manufacturer visibility into the rest of the fleet. On top of that, ToolSense offered the right features, an intuitive interface, and the flexibility to model the company's own process, with implementation speed that was genuinely felt on the project.
The economic advantages come directly from reducing media breaks and the duplicated data-keeping we had so strongly in the past. Digitizing damage reports also lets even a worker who isn't a user, just someone with a mobile phone, capture an issue very quickly. That was a great feature, on top of what we asked for.
Ralf Lüddemann · Director Machine Technology, LEONHARD WEISS
Operational impact
The economic benefit comes straight from fewer media breaks and less duplicated data entry, cutting the working effort that the old fragmented process demanded. There's also a safety and process-reliability dimension: the system itself works dependably, so the company is no longer exposed to data loss that triggers follow-on problems and economic damage. Everything is now concentrated in the right place and stays available. One standout capability is digital field service damage reporting: on a jobsite that runs for years, where responsibilities shift and staff come and go, capturing damages digitally prevents things from being forgotten, removes disputes, and assigns economic impact clearly. This vendor-neutral asset management is exactly what an in-house fleet on large construction projects needs.
What's next
Lüddemann argues construction is further along on digitalization than outsiders assume, already deeply involved through BIM requirements and working with machine data in background use cases. His core conviction: real progress depends on thinking in processes rather than habits and silos. He also frames sustainability broadly, from alternative drive technologies (hydrogen and battery-electric machines, which LEONHARD WEISS is evaluating at scale) to process digitalization and to making machine-cabin workplaces attractive enough to win and keep the best people.
