In his latest profile of manufacturers who are making a difference, Andrew Gaved talks to Thibaud Lefebvre of tool giant Hilti, who has designs on a digital revolution.
Tool manufacturer Hilti may currently be best known in HVAC for its ranges of high-end power tools, but the company is now intent on using digital technology to bring fundamental change to the construction industry and its allied trades.
By using digital tracking and data capture, together with a new portfolio of services – and of course its tool technology which has inbuilt sensors to capture operational data – Hilti has no less an ambition than dramatically improving productivity on site and in hire and merchant yards up and down the country.
The strategy is being spearheaded by VP of Hilti GB Thibaud Lefebvre, who has come from the company’s US operation complete with evidence – both data and personal – that by integrating a range of new processes, businesses can significantly improve productivity in terms of time and activity, and thus make an equally significant improvement on their margins.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the new approach from Hilti is that this is no longer simply a conversation about tools. The digital tracking technology that the company has developed can currently be applied to any asset that a contractor, local authority, hirer or merchant has in their keeping – so it could equally be used to manage a yard full of scaffold towers as a nationwide fleet of power tools, or a warehouse of copper tube, heat pumps and anything in between.
But that is just the start of planned developments that in the near future will see this proprietary ON!Track technology seamlessly linked into enterprise software, so that workers can be linked to their tools, and indeed to their geographical location.
Using the tracking technology together with the onboard diagnostics on the tools enables Hilti to promise ambitiously to transform the work processes of the industry. Lest anyone think that the industry does not need to improve its processes, Thibaud is armed with research that puts it pretty plainly.
Hilti surveyed the construction supply chain to identify where construction and HVAC companies are facing challenges that impact on their productivity.
The issues in the industry
The survey identified six major areas of concern:
1) Inconsistent collaboration with stakeholders – merely engaging with the supply chain would be progress, it seems
2) Too much ‘idle time’ on site. This is the amount of time where there is no active work taking place, for a variety of reasons, which we will come to, and it is a significant issue in construction;
3) Inefficient communication between office and site – The survey found that a as many as 95% of transactions in the industry are still paper- or phone-based;
4) Shortage of skilled labour – Respondents reported their workforce changing by 15-25% per year;
5) ‘Burdensome’ management of projects;
6) Efficiency and/or quality issues in business processes.
“Contractors are struggling to improve their processes to meet the ever-tighter timelines and demands for efficiency from their clients,” says Thibaud. The world of HVAC and M&E is particularly beset by inefficiencies, he adds, given that they are often not dealing directly with a client, but are somewhere down the supply chain as a specialist subcontractor.
The company uncovered a staggering statistic in the course of its research around idle times – only around 30% of an operator’s day is classed as ‘productive work’ – actually using the tool to do something. The other 70%, Hilti found, ranged from anything from planning the job to locating the appropriate tools and accessories; preparing the equipment; and in several cases, charging batteries.
Thibaud likes to quote the statement of one contractor: “Every project comes down to the same thing – hours.” He adds another motto: “Revenue is won in the office, but profit is won on the jobsite.”
Modern IT processes are also often lacking, the survey found:
“Construction firms spend less than 1% of their revenue on IT and related processes. It is one of the least digitalised sectors. Others are around 4-5%. And the result is that the industry is in danger of stagnating, because change is coming in digital matters and it is accelerating fast.”
So for Hilti there is a clear opportunity to improve the situation with technology. But there is an even more compelling reason to encourage this industry, which is notoriously slow to change, to embrace a digitised future: profitability. The company has calculated that on average, customers spend only around 1% of their revenue with on Hilti technology and services, whereas the potential cost savings in efficiencies will easily exceed that “We can, quite simply, make customers more profitable,” he says.
He notes that for a typical firm the labour is the biggest cost, comprising up to 40% of the cost base, while materials can be up to 30% and administration up to 19%. “Our services can have a positive effect on all of these,” he says, “So you can see how the 1% spent with us can be a really good value investment.”
The digital approach
The Hilti digital approach seeks to improve the customer’s productivity with a three-pronged attack:
1) Manage the jobsite with its Fieldwire bespoke project management software;
2) Manage the resources with its ON!Track asset management suite;
3) Improve tool use at the sharp end with its new range of tools and its Fleet Management cradle-to-grave maintenance service.
Thibaud believes the first step could be the most revolutionary for the construction sector in the UK. “Around 80% of customers here are not using any form of jobsite management. You go from site to site and they are still using phones or paper for everything.”
He notes that digitising this process with Fieldwire has been shown to save up to an hour a day per worker – making it a very significant cost saver for those companies with around 20 workers or more.
That isn’t to say that ON!Track isn’t going to reap a revolution in its own right though. Hilti is clearly confident in the potential of the tags and tracking offering, since it is not restricting what is able to be tagged and monitored: any equipment or tool, whatever the manufacturer, and any asset, limited only by the customer’s requirement to track. If a customer wants to keep track of their scaffold poles, in these times where metal is money, they can tag them individually. “Generally the customer will be using an Excel spreadsheet at best, so this is potentially a gamechanger for them” enthuses Thibaud.
By using the latest version of ON!Track and Fleet Management together, the owners will be able to instantly see where their kit is; they will be able, if required, to view on their dashboard which tools are being underused – or not used at all, as is too often the case – and so transfer them to other sites.
Hilti is also excited about the ability to sort the tool usage data from Fleet Management into individual job sites, or if desired by the customer, by employee..
Hilti estimates that trying to locate an ‘idle tool’, would take up to 19 steps if done conventionally (including potentially having to replace a tool that can’t be found), whereas with ON!Track, that process is reduced to seven steps. A basic calculation shows that this alone offers a two-thirds reduction in downtime, Hilti notes – and that is without factoring in things like not needing purchase orders or dispatch notes.
Finally there are the productivity benefits provided by the tools themselves – whether this is in the variety of inbuilt ergonomic features on the tool range or the cordless benefits of the new 90–tool Nuron platform (no mains, no wires, no petrol for the cut-off saws), or harnessing the built-in intelligence of the Nuron battery. The battery alerts the user when it needs replacing – the alert sounds when it reaches 60% of original performance. Hilti notes that while a battery alert isn’t in itself innovative, the fact that it also triggers an alert for Hilti to send the replacement certainly is – and no additional work is required from the owner.
The potential
But even this isn’t the full extent of the potential improvements that can be made, Thibaud emphasises. Because if a company also embraces the rest of Hilti’s labour saving technology at the design stage, such as using prefabricated supports or integrates the Jaibot automated drill rig, which engages directly with BIM designs without further intervention, it can wreak even more savings.
It is a formidable package and the platform is still evolving – developments are ready for a van-based gateway launch in September, allowing tools to be monitored on the move, as well as for integration into personnel management. Thibaud and his colleagues are clearly excited about the opportunities it could bring with customers who can see the potential for a digital overhaul. When you hear that a French customer is using the ON!Track system to track 30,000 items in real time, it gives an indication of the scope.
“We are now looking to have conversations with the senior management who make the financial decisions,” says Thibaud, “We believe we have the potential to make a major impact on their profitability.”
Follow this link for more on the digitisation of construction and the Nuron platform.
