Rath: Eliminating Time Waste with Telematics

Before Commander: an hour a day, lost to phone calls.

Rath GmbH & Co. KG is a family-run construction company in Haiterbach with 110 employees, specialising in road construction, civil engineering, canalisation, and gravel works. Like most construction companies of its size, Rath ran on local knowledge and manual processes: foremen called the office to find machines, dispatchers entered data by hand, and maintenance schedules were fixed rather than flexible.

The cost of that approach was invisible, until it was measured. Up to an hour a day per foreman spent chasing machine locations. Manual cost centre assignments creating billing confusion. Fixed maintenance intervals generating unnecessary service trips. With Commander, Rath changed all of it.

The numbers that matter

The results at Rath are specific and measurable:

• 10% reduction in idle times through optimised machine scheduling
• 10–15% fewer annual maintenance appointments: needs-based scheduling replaces fixed intervals
• ~1 hour daily time savings per foreman and dispatcher: 10% of previous manual administration eliminated
• Elimination of up to an hour per day previously lost to machine location research

Geofences replace phone calls

Commander’s geofence functionality automatically assigns devices to cost centres based on their location. A machine arrives at a construction site, and it is assigned to that project’s cost centre automatically. No manual entry. No confusion. No reconciliation required at month-end.

Theft protection comes with it: unauthorised movement triggers an immediate alert. The machine is always locatable. The question “where is the excavator?” has a real-time answer, available to anyone with access to Commander.

Maintenance that follows usage, not the calendar

Fixed maintenance intervals are a blunt instrument. A machine that has sat idle for three months does not need the same service as one that has run hard for those same three months. Commander’s needs-based maintenance planning tracks actual operating hours and schedules service accordingly, reducing unnecessary appointments by 10–15% annually at Rath.

Integration with BauMobil

Rath integrated Commander with their BauMobil construction site management software. Fleet data flows directly into project management: no duplicate entry, no data gaps between systems.

More than efficiency. Better work.

“The introduction of the telematics system from Rosenberger Telematics has not only revolutionised our processes, but has also significantly improved the working environment for our team. We can now make digitally informed decisions that improve our efficiency and increase job satisfaction at the same time. It’s amazing to see how much easier our daily work has become.” — Paul Reiss, Fleet Manager, Rath GmbH & Co. KG

That is the often-overlooked dimension of telematics. The time saved is real. But the frustration eliminated, the daily grind of not knowing where assets are, of fixing errors in manual data, of reacting rather than planning, is equally valuable.