Kespry's drone-based aerial intelligence platform is being used by aggregates company Bard Materials for inventory management and mine planning.
Kespry says its platform is allowing the company in the Illinois-Iowa-Wisconsin tri-state area to balance demand signals, inventory and production.
Eric Glendenning, technical services director, Bard, says: “We’ve got 60 quarry and sandpit locations where we used to send someone once a week to in order to get a visual to validate inventory. Now, with Kespry, we can put one person in a pickup truck who just regularly flies those sites when necessary and gets good, accurate information. From there, we can make good decisions on where to send dump trucks, so we’re not showing up in a location where we have no current inventory. We like our dump trucks to be full and Kespry helps us ensure they are.”
Bard is also boosting its productivity by using the Kespry Cloud, the company adds.
“We’ve got the Kespry Cloud set up for people to view information as needed,” Glendenning continues. “If our environmental team knows we’re flying locations, rather than them calling the drone operator, they can just pop onto the Kespry Cloud and see when a site was flown and the data captured about it. They don’t need to make any phone calls or track anyone down. The Kespry Cloud is also accurate. It can’t be manipulated. It can’t be misinterpreted. There’s no such thing as incorrect. That’s great for everyone from the front office to the back office. Building that confidence into our numbers is pretty significant.”
According to Kespry, the solution also enables Bard to adhere to social distancing requirements during the coronavirus pandemic.
“With Kespry, one person is able to manage the whole system, upload the information, pull the reports, validate the information, and send it all out. Right now, the fewer people you can involve in processes the better. So, Kespry has made things super smooth, even during this difficult time,” Glendenning adds.
Bard has a network of more than 24 ready-mix plants and 60 aggregates sources across the region.
