Digital Support in the State Forest: 600 Getac F110 Tablets for the Lower Saxony State Forests
With 330,000 hectares of managed forest land, approximately 1,350 employees, and an annual turnover of about 160 million euros, the Lower Saxony State Forests are among Germany's largest forestry enterprises. In addition to sustainable management of the state forest, they undertake numerous public welfare tasks and services for the state of Lower Saxony. The Lower Saxony State Forests are consistently digitizing their timber registration, right through to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Challenge
Timber stacks must be registered immediately after harvesting at the forest track and transferred to the ERP system with exact location data; outdoors year-round, often during the peak winter season and with sometimes limited network coverage. For this, the district management requires fail-safe, powerful devices that reliably handle these conditions and ensure stable processes.
Solution
In a demanding tender process, including a practical test in the forest, the fully rugged Getac F110 tablets with VGPS software prevailed against several competitors and replaced the previously used devices. Today, the Lower Saxony State Forests use approximately 600 of these rugged tablets in the field, for example, for timber registration, mapping, planning, and monitoring of nature conservation measures; including GPS-supported coordinates and photo-optical volume determination, and then automatically synchronize the data with the central ERP system.
Advantages
Continuous, media-break-free processes from the forest track to the ERP system accelerate timber registration and increase efficiency and data quality. Precise location data, automated evaluation of timber stack images, and seamless transfer to the ERP system accelerate processes and directly contribute to profitability.
Thanks to high operational reliability, hot-swappable batteries, and suitable accessories, costly downtimes are avoided. The display remains perfectly readable even in difficult lighting conditions and supports quick on-site decisions.
"The Getac F110 enables time-efficient timber registration with high data quality. Thanks to the VGPS software integration and image evaluation directly in the forest, we work without broken processes between field service and ERP. The fact that hot-swappable batteries and coordinated accessories prevent costly downtimes makes the solution completely reliable for us."
Fritz Hofheinz, Head of Forestry Applications Department, Lower Saxony State Forests.
