Axians Switzerland has conceived and designed an application with its customer Sunrise to facilitate the reuse of electrical equipment in a circular economy approach.
Axians Switzerland, the VINCI Energies ICT brand, was one of the suppliers called upon by Sunrise, Switzerland’s leading private telecommunications operator, to maintain and upgrade its mobile telephony installations. Technicians from all Sunrise’s providers faced a recurrent problem in having to record components disassembled in situ in a tool not designed for the task.
“The tool could only be used by one person at a time,” explains André Hilmer, Key Account Manager at Axians Switzerland. “It was not at all ergonomic, and the error rate was high due to the manual inputting. If a technician forgot to close the application after use, on one else could access it.”
This situation was unsatisfactory for Sunrise, which found itself with a far too low a reuse rate for disassembled components in full working order. Additionally, with each service provider having their own logistics chain, locating and reusing components on other mobile telephony sites was proving particularly complex. Too many materials ended up being recycled rather than reused, due to the lack of an adequate logistics system.
Simplicity, multiple services, and circularity
In 2021, Axians and Sunrise decided to develop a simpler multi-service solution based on an end-to-end circular economy approach.
“Thanks to AxiTrack, 30% to 40% of the materials disassembled on Sunrise sites are now reused or sold on”
“Having noted that each component has a barcode identifier, we decided to design a mobile application that could scan these barcodes to record the data,” says André Hilmer. “Materials can then be tracked end-to-end in real time. For components without a barcode, the technician photographs them on the dismantling site and assigns them a unique number.”
Reuse and savings
In operation since 2022, the AxiTrack solution developed by Axians Switzerland and Sunrise now includes logistics functionality and is also used by the telecoms operator’s other providers
“Since its introduction, 30% to 40% of the materials recovered have been reused by the operator or sold on to other companies in the market,” says André Hilmer, “with the remainder being professionally recycled.”
AxiTrack allows precise tracking of the components used and makes them more readily available, which speeds up and enhances each team’s work.
With this solution, materials reuse rates are higher, allowing substantial cost savings “In the order of more than a million [Swiss] francs since launch,” according to the Axians manager.
The success of AxiTrack, which facilitates a second life for thousands of telecommunications network components, is attracting interest from other business units in the Axians network. André Hilmer concludes on another positive note: “We’re in contact with our colleagues in Brazil and France, who want to know more about the solution and potentially implement it in their own countries for their own customers.”
AxiTrack in 4 stages
The AxiTrack application follows a four-stage process. The first involves entering details of the components disassembled on-site, which are then transferred automatically to the AxiShop online store. Once the materials have been returned to the Axians central warehouse in Kirchberg, north of Bern, they are visually inspected, packed and stored. Available equipment is itemised and can then be ordered via AxiShop for delivery to a new site where it can be reused.
11/14/2024
