Save energy with intelligent app
Reduce energy costs through the right product
As a car paint manufacturer, Axalta wants to help the body shop to save energy. Most car paints must be dried in an oven at 60°. Axalta also has a product line of extra fast drying products. This can have a major influence on the energy cost of the body shop. In most cases, less energy consumption also means less CO2 emissions. In order to be able to demonstrate this substantial advantage to the body shop, Axalta wanted to have an easy tool developed. This tool should calculate the benefit based on the many parameters influencing the cost such as the type of oven, the ventilation volumes, the ambient temperature, number of cars etc. Parameters that differ from company to company.
Developing an app in the short term
Axalta wanted to respond to the rising energy prices and the attention for reduced CO2 emissions. It was therefore important to develop the tool in very short term. The tool had to indicate how much can be saved on energy costs and CO2 emissions when using Axalta's fast-drying paint. The savings had to be demonstrated compared to other paint products of the manufacturer itself and to competitive products. The online tool was to be used in 35 countries, both by Axalta’s own sales team but also by their distributors.
App calculates energy costs per type of product
Coteng developed a tailor-made cloud application in which the energy cost as well as the CO2 emissions can be calculated. The user can easily enter the parameters for a specific company such as the heating-up time of the oven, the gas price, the air flow, the hourly wage, and so on. If he does not know some parameters, he can use a default. The impact on an annual basis of each parameter change is immediately visible in the graphical dashboard that clearly visualizes the differences between the compared competitive products.
The app goes even one step further. The impact on the productivity of the body shop is also calculated. For example, when a paint product can be applied in fewer layers, it can save on working hours. In combination with the shorter drying times, this ensures that with the same staff and the same infrastructure, more cars can be repaired per day.
The app provides the possibility to test this in practice. The body shop can set up some tests to measure working hours while painting some test objects such as a bonnet with different types and brands of paint. These measured durations are used by the app to calculate productivity differences between the compared products on an annual basis.
This tool is used by Axalta's salespeople and dealers to proof and quantify the benefits of their fast-drying paint for a specific body shop. An extremely important selling point in times of high energy prices.
Handy sales tool
The app has been enthusiastically received by the users. First of all, they only have to enter a limited number of parameters themselves. The Axalta product portfolio and product features (drying time etc) are loaded from existing Axalta databases and kept up-to-date. Other data can be prepared by the administrator of the app on a European level so that the user can easily click on it.
Furthermore, users are guided step by step by a wizard when setting up a comparison in the app. This makes them feel confident in the presence of the (potential) customer.
From idea discussion to final delivery, the development of this app was completed within three months.
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