Kathrein Solutions Re-organizes Management Level & Business Activities!
The first half of 2020 has had a lasting impact on the entire market situation and clearly shows that such changes must be implemented dynamically and quickly in companies. Kathrein Solutions GmbH uses this time to reorganize the management level and business activities.
With Emre Gürbüz as the new Chief Sales Officer and Christian Schnebinger as Deputy Sales Officer, the company is relying on two well-established employees in sales, with Manuel Reichl taking over the Professional Services Department.
Scaling for Optimal Customer Support
“The holistic approach to solutions adopted in the past few years is to be supplemented with further target-oriented measures,“ explains Emre Gürbüz.
“We want and have to scale again to a much greater extent via our integration and software partners in order to be able to optimally support our customers in the target region DACH, but also globally“, adds Schnebinger. “Our partners, whether small or large, deserve optimal support in order to constantly bring them closer to the latest developments“.
New Chief Sales Officer: Emre Gürbuz
Emre Gürbüz has been working exclusively in the Auto ID business since 2007. He started out in consulting at nofilis AutoID in Ismaning and moved to Kathrein Solutions in 2014. Due to his experience and comprehensive view, Gürbüz took over the management of the newly created Professional Services Department, which led to the acquisition of nofilis in 2016/17. As the next step, he took over the position of Chief Sales Officer in May 2020.
New Deputy Sales Officer: Christian Schnebinger
Christian Schnebinger joined the former Kathrein RFID in 2016 in the Sales Department. For more than two years now, he has been responsible for the Intelligent Transportation Systems Division, one of the largest business units at Kathrein Solutions. During his entire career, Mr. Schnebinger has always been involved in the field of sales controlling and will now be responsible for this area.
Professional Services Department Led by Manuel Reichl
Emre Gürbüz will be succeeded in the Professional Services Department by Manuel Reichl, who has also been working at Kathrein for many years as a Project Manager for a wide range of products (mobile communications, IoT) and applications (development/production, contract projects), and has been Deputy Head of the Professional Services Department for three years.
Mr. Reichl was significantly responsible for the establishment of a professional project management and has implemented clear structures. “It is absolutely fantastic that we were able to fill these important positions with colleagues from our own ranks. It is extremely important that the identity of our company is carried on and kept alive”, expressed Thomas Brunner, Managing Director of Kathrein Solutions enthusiastically.
Successful Partner Cooperation Partner: Cisper
Arthur Fioole, Managing Director, CISPER : Cisper is an authorized distributor for Kathrein Solutions for the EMEA region. Over the past years, a close bond has been established between the two companies. The Cisper team enjoys working with Kathrein products, especially because of the high quality of performance and product build. Next to that, we feel that we and our customers can benefit from the outstanding technical support from the Kathrein. Cisper is dedicated to promoting these great products.
Partner: L-Mobile
Daniel Diemer, Managing Director, L-Mobile Infrastructure: The cooperation with Kathrein Solutions could not be more enjoyable. This is mainly due to the fact that in Kathrein we have found a partner who not only provides excellent products. As an IT system house, we are dependent on partners who support us in projects competently and with the fastest reaction time. Kathrein Solutions stands out extremely positively in this respect.
Case Study: Workwear Management – Decentralized Laundry Services
Challenge: Intelligent Laundry Dispensing Cabinets
KEMAS, a Saxon company, is a leading provider of automation-oriented solutions based on RFID technology for customers and employees. These so-called self-service solutions are particularly useful for optimizing workwear logistics. The aim is to provide employees with the right amount of workwear round-the-clock using UHF RFID technology and intelligent laundry dispensing cabinets while organizing the removal and return of clothes transparently and efficiently.
Initial Situation: Lack of a Proper Control System
Providing employees with workwear always poses personnel and logistical challenges to a company. Central laundry services are often not manned round-the-clock, and machine-based systems cannot reach the same speed as central laundry services. Often, there are not enough clothing items available for all employees. This is due to different reasons. The result, however, always is dissatisfaction among employees.
As a consequence, the daily dispense and return of workwear cannot be guaranteed. Both the personnel expenses and the time lost are factors that must not be underestimated. Hence, there is a need for better analysis and control of workwear management.
Solution: Transparency of the Workwear Textile Flow of Goods
By using RFID technology in the textile dispensing cabinets, the user can log in to the cabinet directly using an RFID employee ID card. After the authorization check, the system guides the user to the correct output compartments one after the other, where they can collect their clothes directly.
All clothing items are tagged with a UHF RFID transponder and the compartments are equipped with intelligent Kathrein Solutions SmartShelf antennas and an RRU4500 RFID reader. All textiles are identified at the supply points during the processes of stocking, collection, return, and disposal.
For the continuous management of the textile inventory, all information about the workwear items and wearer are linked to one another making the flow of the textile goods transparent. This enables the static detection of several transponders within one workwear issue and return process. New clothing items are issued after used clothes have been returned. The cabinets serve as a depot, and permanent inventory management is possible.
The respective inventory is immediately visible in real time and can be used as an inventory check. Service providers receive separate access rights to stock the dispense cabinets with clean textiles. In addition, individual evaluation reports can be created in order to optimize the workwear management.
Result: Continuous Inventory
Kathrein Solutions RFID technology enables continuous inventory and provides an overview of the textile inventory in real time. The distribution of workwear via intelligent dispensing systems also provides an overview of the quantities in circulation and enables to adapt the supply to actual needs. This way, intact and clean workwear can be guaranteed round-the-clock. The number of clothes in circulation can be reduced, which contributes to a significant improvement in efficiency and reduction in costs.
Constant transparency and continuous documentation of the life cycle of the textiles are also made possible. Smartly combined, intelligent laundry dispensing systems reduce personnel time that was spent traveling and searching.
Case Study Tracking & Tracing: Ca'del Bosco Franciacorta – From the Vineyard to the Bottle
Challenge: For an Optimal Supply Chain Transparency
The demand for wine supply chain transparency is an ever-increasing trend. Consumers’ awareness towards the products they purchase and consume is growing and so does the demand for detailed information on the overall process of wine-making. From the grape to the bottle the supply chain has to be comprehensible.
In order to accomplish the consumers’ demands, the winemakers are required to find the right solutions to fulfill those challenges. This can be done through the implementation of state-ofthe-art identification technologies: Tracking & Tracing with Kathrein Solutions.
Background Supply Chain Transparency: Ca’ del Bosco
Ca’ del Bosco is one of the most modern and advanced cellars in Italy, famous for its exceptional wines. The winery seized the challenge and understood that in order to comply with the new market requirements, there was a need for improved technology application in its own operative flow. As a means to do that, they addressed to our Italian partner SAIT, a company specialized in highly technological traceability solutions.
By working together, a project was defined. The main aim of the devised project was to implement a system able to automatically track and trace the entire production process and the supply chain in order to achieve the global traceability paradigm desired.
Solutions: A Transparent Supply Chain
The solution follows specific operations during the wine-making process, starting with registering the vineyards in the system. The winemaker can trace back the varieties of grapes to the original vineyard. Inside the warehouse, loading is simplified by using RAIN RFID tagged pallets which identify and register the tents inside. This information is sent accordingly to the correct processing operation.
These are fundamental attributes that offer support to the customer during the complex process of vinification, for an accurate selection of various musts and types of wines a recipe requires. Depending on the final product, the wines are transferred to different containers, tracked and identified with RAIN RFID labels. During the labeling phase, through serialization, a unique ID is given to the bottle enabling its traceability outside the cellar, through the supply chain and on the market, facilitating the logistics operations.
Result: Tracking & Tracing for the Consumer at its Best
Thanks to the technological improvements, Ca’ del Bosco winery managed to overcome all the initial challenges and to improve the overall efficiency, accuracy and control in the whole supply chain:
- Streamlining the production process
- Tracing the product in the whole manufacturing process
- Controlling and registering the results of the analysis and quality control checks
- Controlling the gray market
- Protecting the trademark against counterfeits
- Guaranteeing to the customer the credence qualities of each bottle of Ca’ del Bosco wine
The many applications of RAIN RFID technology permit future evolutions and implementations in the wine industry in production and logistics. Also the marketing department can use this modern tracking & tracing method to emphasize a care taking company.
Also: NFC tags can be used as a substitute of the already existent QR Code for a more unique customer engagement.
