The silo's empty? - Salt is just a mouse click away!

Winter road clearance services

Deutsche Straßendienst GmbH (DSD), a subsidiary of esco - european salt company (Hanover) that specializes in supplying public winter road maintenance services has installed a system that automatically measures and supplements stocks of de-icing salt at Entsorgungsbetriebe Essen GmbH (EBE).

This logistics instrument, which, as "Vendor-Managed-Inventory" (VMI), has already proved its worth in retailing and manufacturing for a number of years, will be used by a winter road maintenance service in Germany for the first time. What is so special about the system is that when stocks of salt reach a certain pre-determined minimum level, the system informs the customer by e-mail and offers him the possibility of ordering additional supplies over the Internet with just a few mouse clicks. The advantages are obvious: The customer no longer has to keep an eye on stock levels or observe delivery periods and also saves time on cumbersome order procedures. Thus, the customer is always able to fall back on sufficient stocks when it matters. Even the monitoring of deliveries is handled by the system, which registers the delivery note number entered by the haulier.

The technical concept is based on an ultrasound sensor, which measures how full a salt silo is. Using a system specially developed for esco, the data is transmitted by cellular radio to the data processing centre operated by data process, an IT service provider that also belongs to the K+S Group. The data is analyzed there and made usable for production and delivery planning.

DSD and EBE want to use the winter season that has just started to test the system under the conditions that exist in practice. The results will be used to further develop the concept, in which other esco customers have already expressed an interest.

Salt for Europe

esco, a K+S Group company, is one of Europe's leading salt producers. The Hanover-based company has 17 production and distribution sites located in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal.

esco offers a full range of high quality salt products for industry, commercial customers, private consumers and road maintenance services. The company employees 1,380 people and achieved revenues of approximately EUR 360 million in 2004.