NATURAL RESOURCES
From forest site to inventory management – fast, accurate and reliable.
How the German Lower Saxony State Forestry Authority is using the Getac F110 to speed up timber harvesting and avoid costly downtime.
With 330,000 hectares of managed forest land, around 1,350 employees and an annual turnover of approximately 160 million euros, Niedersächsische Landesforsten (Lower Saxony State Forestry Authority) is one of Germany’s largest forestry operations. In addition to the sustainable management of the state’s forests, it undertakes numerous public service tasks and provides services for the state of Lower Saxony. Niedersächsische Landesforsten is systematically digitising its timber harvesting processes right through to inventory management.
Challenge
Timber stacks must be recorded directly on the forest site immediately after felling and added into the inventory management system with precise location data; this takes place outdoors all year round, often during the peak winter season and in areas with limited mobile network coverage. To achieve this, the district management requires fail-safe, high-performance devices that can reliably cope with these conditions and ensure stable processes.
Solution
In a demanding tender process, which included a practical test in the forest, the fully rugged Getac F110 tablets and its VGPS Software outperformed several competitors and replaced the devices previously in use. Today, Lower Saxony State Forestry Service uses around 600 of these rugged tablets in the field, for example for timber measurement, mapping, planning and monitoring of nature conservation measures (including GPS-based coordinates and photo-optical volume measurement), and subsequently synchronises the data automatically with the central inventory management system.
Benefits
Seamless, fully integrated processes from the forest site right through to the ERP system speed up timber recording and improve efficiency and data quality. Precise location data, automated analysis of timber stack images and seamless transfer to the inventory management system speed up workflows and contribute directly to profitability.
Thanks to high reliability, hot-swappable batteries and matching accessories, costly downtime is avoided. The display remains clearly readable even in difficult lighting conditions and enables quick on-site decision-making.
“The Getac F110 enables time-saving timber recording whilst maintaining high data quality. Thanks to the VGPS software integration and image analysis directly in the forest, we work without workflow interruptions between field operations and the inventory management system. The fact that hot-swappable batteries and tailored accessories prevent costly downtime makes the solution completely reliable for us.”
Fritz Hofheinz, Head of Forestry Applications,
Niedersächsische Landesforsten
Explore the solutions which are helping Lower Saxony State Forestry Authority
F110 Fully Rugged Tablet
The new F110 fully-rugged tablet offers an easy-to-carry profile, a comfortable touchscreen, and more power to run your general office and industry-specific applications with ease.