Heinz Schlotmann GmbH adopted ToolSense to pull a scattered, multi-source equipment landscape, Excel lists, a WhatsApp group, two separate telematics systems, into one cloud platform where master data, operating hours and machine locations finally live and can be evaluated together.
Schlotmann is part of a small four-company group active in civil engineering, building materials and recycling, based in Paderborn, East Westphalia, and active for more than 60 years. Vinzenz Molinski is the group's commercial lead. As the company widened its scope, its equipment fleet and fixed assets grew, and with them the responsibility to manage that equipment carefully. The contact with ToolSense came about by chance at bauma, and Molinski says he has been positively impressed since.
The starting point
The status quo at Schlotmann is, by Molinski's own account, the typical mid-market German picture: no single system for equipment management. The baseline lived in an Excel list kept in the workshop, recording what machines they had, their condition and whatever documents Excel could hold in its rudimentary way. For the simple question of where a machine actually was, there was effectively nothing, just a WhatsApp group where colleagues asked around and got an answer if they were lucky.
The fleet side was further along but fragmented. Trucks and the vehicle dispatch already ran on manufacturer telematics, extended with a third-party provider's software. Operating hours for construction machines such as excavators and wheel loaders, billed internally and externally, were recorded the same way, again through manufacturer telematics and third-party software. The result was many different sources of data and the headaches that come with such decentralisation.
Why ToolSense
For Molinski the decisive draw is centralisation. ToolSense is a cloud-based asset management platform, so master data for trucks, cars and construction machines, plus operating-hours capture, is recorded in one place and can be evaluated together rather than reconciled across silos.
The clear advantage is the centralisation of data. And the question in the WhatsApp group of where something is resolves itself, naturally, without doing anything for it, simply through location capture.
Vinzenz Molinski · Sales Manager at Heinz Schlotmann GmbH, Schlotmann
Operational impact
The most immediate change is that the "where is it?" problem disappears on its own: location capture answers it without anyone chasing colleagues in a chat. Pulling trucks, cars, construction machinery and operating hours into a single cloud system removes administrative back-and-forth and the unnecessary work that came with juggling separate tools.
The first concrete win Molinski is targeting is clean master data and, with it, simply knowing what the company actually owns. Larger machines like wheel loaders and excavators are countable, but with smaller equipment it is easy to lose track, and establishing an accurate status quo is the valuable first step.
What's next
Molinski expects further goals to emerge only once ToolSense is fully implemented and both the office and the crews out on site are using it. Schlotmann sees a clear digitalisation pressure in its corner of construction, the trades it works in have moved fast on GPS technology and CAD-driven work, and falling behind on those means losing ground in the market. Bringing equipment management onto one platform is part of keeping pace, and Molinski's advice to peers is blunt: listen to the younger generation's ideas, try new things, and stop doing it just because that's how it has always been done.
