The construction industry, being highly labor intensive, requires more numbers of skilled labor, good quality of work, and increase in productivity etc. The problems associated with construction work, such as decreasing quality of work, can be overcome by new innovative technologies that automate processes to improve the quality and productivity in the construction industry. Today, it is evident that the level of automation in construction is very low in comparison with current technological advances; however, one company in Mexico City realizes the benefits that these solutions yield.
Fortaleza
Cementos Fortaleza was founded in December 2011 as a channel of distribution of Elementia, mainly to look after the requirement of the companies of the group, and to have presence in the market of Mexico City. The company has an international presence and produces and commercializes building materials such as Cement, Building Systems, and Metals for the construction sector. The company operates in 14 countries, including Latin America and the United States. What they believe sets them apart from their competition is the quality of their products and the service that they provide.
Problem
Fortaleza was manually producing their concrete and wanted a way to automate the process to decrease the amount of time that it took. It was taking up to half an hour to produce each batch of materials.
Solution
They thought about developing a system internally, but they needed a robust solution that could deliver results in a timely manner. They decided that COMMANDbatch, Command Alkon’s automated batching system, was the answer to their inefficient production process. COMMANDbatch leads the industry in innovation and reliability. The batching control system and plant automation products are recognized worldwide for helping producers achieve operational efficiency, quality, time savings, and profitability based on their specific needs. The accuracy and speed of COMMANDbatch are unmatched by any other system.
To extend the value of their automated batching system, they also integrated COMMANDconcrete for distribution and delivery of their product, COMMANDqc to monitor the quality and consistency, MOBILEjobsite for dispatch data in real-time, and MOBILEticket reduces the cost of printing, paper, and transferring tickets between the field and the billing office.
Many of these systems not only provide value to Fortaleza, but to their customers as well. COMMANDqc uses real-time data to optimize mix materials, while ensuring that all standards set forth are met so that their customers’ jobs are not delayed by the wrong materials being delivered. MOBILEjobsite provides information on orders scheduled for the day, upcoming orders for future days, real-time truck locations, load-level summaries of completed and upcoming orders, notifications when a load is on the way to the site, and records of load status times. They have realized that their customers like to see the status of their order, and in turn will give Fortaleza’s service high ratings.
“We rely on our Command Alkon products to produce, control, and deliver our mixes to our final clients. The products are accompanied by support service and maintenance, which we have available all the time.”
- Samuel Yañez, IT Manager at Fortaleza
Results
Fortaleza has realized positive results in productivity/efficiency, quality, planning, and customer service after only 6 months of having their systems implemented. Their automated production process allows them to produce more with less time, and integrations with COMMANDconcrete simplifies the payment process through the ability to automatically bill customers.
Additional improvements that they have realized, specifically in their logistics process, include:
- Real-time data available
- Information can be seen whenever needed
- Accurate deliveries
- Better control of logistics
- Efficient logistics plans
“The solution greatly improved our administrative control, and once automated, our production process saw great results in a short amount of time.”
- Samuel Yañez
Companies like Fortaleza are improving our industry by implementing automated, intelligent workflows to remove the repetitive and unnecessary steps within processes. This leads to an increase in worker productivity and improves the efficiency of their trading partners as well.
