Leading Romanian rental firm orders telematics kits for 110 Genie® boom lifts
Industrial Access, Romania’s leading equipment rental company, is reputed for being technologically advanced in using data to manage its fleet. Owners of a total of 4,000 machines, the company’s aerial fleet counts 1,500 units – 40% of which are Genie® units. Today, 110 of Industrial Access’ fully CAN-based Genie machines are equipped with the new Genie Lift Connect™ telematics solution.
In 2019, as part of the final phase of development of the Genie Lift Connect telematics solution, Genie and Industrial Access worked together to validate the reliability and superiority of the Genie telematics solution compared with other telematics programmes on the market. Several months of testing performed on eight CAN-based Genie GS™ scissor lifts, as well as Genie Xtra Capacity™ (XC™) S® and Z® boom lifts, allowed the Industrial Access telematics technical team to endorse the advantages of the Genie Lift Connect offering.
According to Stefan Ponea, Founder and CEO, Industrial Access and Radu Balu, Telematics and Intelligent Equipment Specialist, Industrial Access, one reason their company got on board with the Genie Lift Connect solution was a test that enabled them to remotely troubleshoot a Deutz engine on a Genie S-85 XC boom, which was located on a jobsite in the town of Constanta, near the Black Sea. Error codes sent in by the machine to the telematics program made it possible to identify the reasons for the engine’s failure immediately and to organise the logistics before sending a technician into the field, saving time and money.
The result: Industrial Access recently ordered Genie Lift Connect aftermarket kits for 110 of its fully CAN-based Genie machines produced before 2020.
Genie Director of Product and Business Development for Telematics, Terex AWP, Christine Zeznick explains what made Industrial Access the right partners for the test: “Our companies have been partners for more than 10 years, and Industrial Access is extremely experienced in the use of telematics. Put together, we both gain from working together to offer the best telematics software and hardware in the aerial market.”
Directly involved in the test, Stefan Ponea, said: "We took advantage of the offer from Genie to partner on the development of the Genie Lift Connect telematic solution because we understood that the approach of Genie to fleet management focuses on tangible, actionable data. In 2006, we created our own fleet management ecosystem, SmartRent, and were still looking for the right telematics system to feed information into it.”
SmartRent is a top-class fleet management system that, within just a few years, has enabled Industrial Access to grow from being a medium-sized, general rental business to the position of market leader offering a vast range of equipment. For Industrial Access, Genie was the right partner capable of supporting the firm’s ambition to grow its business further, at the same time as helping to improve the development of its own telematics programme. Ponea continues: "Before engaging in the test, we needed to be certain that the hardware and the software of the Genie Lift Connect solution would respond to our needs efficiently, based on our own fleet management experience with Smartrent starting with a small number of units. Genie accepted the challenge. We worked hand-in-hand as a team with a common goal of bringing to market the most efficient telematics solution in the aerial industry, both directly and from API. Based on our experience, the objective has by all means been achieved.”
Since January 2020, the new Genie telematics solution is now available for the EME region (Europe and some Middle East countries) as a factory-installed feature that comes standard with a free, 3-year subscription for Genie GS scissor lifts, Genie Z and S boom lifts, and GTH™ telehandlers. Aftermarket kits are available for machines produced back to 2015.
