Kalmar announced a range of new digital products and services at its Kalmar New Era for Logistics event today.

The main product announcement is the new “Kalmar Tracker” automated container information solution for capturing container ID, weight and location data automatically from mobile equipment. Launched initially for reachstackers, Kalmar Tracker will also be available for other mobile plant in 2022.

Kalmar Tracker features onboard OCR hardware and processing that is connected to other systems on the machine to read the container number, measure the container weight for verifying or generating a VGM under SOLAS, and for calculating the container load eccentricity for safety. These options are available for reachstackers today, with other equipment to follow.

In spring 2022 an option for capturing container location will be added to Kalmar Tracker. This will use a radar-based system to measure the position of the container in the stack. 

There are different options for managing the data. It is available in the fleet management tool Kalmar Insight and can be integrated with the TOS or other applications as required through an open API.

Speaking at the Kalmar New Era event today Marco Tosi, Country Director, Kalmar Italia and Alina Reinhold, E-Commerce Manager, Kalmar Global, outlined the progress Kalmar is making with digital products and services. Reinhold said today almost one of every two orders for spare parts is placed through the My Kalmar digital services platform, which can be integrated with the Kalmar Insight Maintenance Module to schedule servicing, whether provided by Kalmar or in-house.

Kalmar is also leveraging telematics data from its mobile equipment to offer its “EcoFlex” rental solution, where customers can pay a lower monthly fee by operating the equipment in Eco mode, while still being able to draw on “standard” and “power” modes when required at a higher rental rate.

All new Kalmar mobile equipment is delivered ready to connect to Kalmar Insight, which provides the data for EcoFlex. Reinhold said an operator can save between 5-10% in monthly rental costs by operating the equipment in Eco mode, in addition to benefitting from reduced fuel consumption, less maintenance and longer service intervals. She described EcoFlex as an important step towards performance-based billing, where the customer pays per use (container move) or per hour. 

EcoFlex and other billing options could prove very important in shifting the conversation around access to telematics data from equipment and components at terminals. Some terminals are reluctant to share data around how their equipment is used, but that could change if there are financial incentives to share in its value.

Kalmar also announced an “online sales configurator”, similar to the web tools offered by auto manufacturers for passenger cars, to let Kalmar customers select and configure mobile equipment online. This will include “Track and Trace” to give customers better visibility into lead times for new equipment. Orders will be integrated with Kalmar’s manufacturing and delivery systems to prebook manufacturing capacity and customers will have visibility into production dates and be able to track equipment through production and shipment to final delivery.