Reseller: Autonet BV (www.onderdelenlijn.nl)
Location: Netherlands
TigerLogic Product: D3 Database Management System
Dutch Developer uses TigerLogic's D3 to create Market Leading Automation Solution for the Used Car Parts and Dismantling Industry
End-of-life vehicles (ELVs) generate an estimated eight to nine million tons of waste annually in the European market. In 1995, the Netherlands became one of the first countries to organize the recycling of end-of-life vehicles to reduce the amount of ELV weight going to landfills. Car dismantling companies contracted with various organizations in the Dutch automotive industry to help bring about drastic reductions in waste generated by ELV. By 2008, more than 85% of the total weight of a typical ELV was recycled and that percentage continues to rise. Although government agencies formed the legal and regulatory framework, the lack of structure in the car dismantling industry led to the need for automation, organization and quality standards.
In 1990, Autonet began developing automation software solutions to meet all of the recycling requirements of a professional and environmentally-conscious car dismantling operation. The company had a vision for an automated stock management system for used car parts. This was realized with Autonet's first solution called "de Onderdelenlijn" (meaning "parts line"), which was developed on a central Pick database. Dismantling companies that subscribed to "de Onderdelenlijn" received a terminal that was installed at their site. Customers called in their requests for car parts and the dismantler entered the requests into the Pick database. "de Onderdelenlijn" was the first of its kind in the Netherlands and the first step in an automation process that was easy to use and understand.
"The Pick database was chosen for the flexible data model, which allowed the "de Onderdelenlijn" database to be easily structured to meet the requirements of the application," said Emil Apeldoorn, Owner, Managing Director, Autonet. "The Pick/BASIC programming language, with its built-in knowledge of the multi-value data structure, provided an easy to use development environment, with high performance data access, for building our application. The use of data dictionaries made it possible for the same set of information to be easily represented in different views."
The next step in Autonet's automation process was to build an application where car dismantling companies could store and retrieve information about their used car parts inventory. This application had to be inexpensive, easy to use, and provide multi-user capabilities. Once again, Pick was chosen as the development environment due to its high performance and ability to model real-world applications in a multi-user environment. Using Pick, Autonet created "Automate", a standard car dismantling company software package, comprising several business software modules ranging from inventory to sales to administration.
In 1997, Autonet saw the potential of the internet and "de Onderdelenlijn" went online (www.onderdelenlijn.nl). From the de Onderdelenlijn website, visitors can easily check for car parts and place requests for parts, which will be received by every car dismantler affiliated with Autonet. Every part in stock that is recorded at an Autonet affiliated car dismantling site is directly visible on the de Onderdelenlijn website. All parts are updated in real-time from each individual car dismantling company running the Automate software on D3, which is completely integrated with "de Onderdelenlijn". With over 1.5 million car parts stored in its system, Autonet has one of the largest inventories of used car parts in Europe, handling the majority of car dismantling companies in the Netherlands.
Today, Automate continues to run on TigerLogic's D3 database management system and is used by over 200 Netherland car dismantling companies. Autonet utilizes only two D3 programmers and one Web programmer to manage, develop, and enhance their D3-based Autonet system. With the latest D3 version 9.0 as their database platform of choice, Autonet expects to remain the market leader for the car dismantling industry. "The flexibility and innovative technology of D3 has made Autonet the company it is today. The low cost of ownership, combined with great product support helped Autonet to automate the car-dismantling industry in Holland with efficiency and professionalism," concluded Apeldoorn.
