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As an integrated transport, logistics, and rural supply company, Lindsay Australia is responsible for delivering fresh seafood and produce of Australian rural.
With its dozens of transport depots across Australia – even the more rural areas – the company found itself needing a reliable IT solution that could help them stay online and ensure that their deliveries are carried out on-time.
Moreover, given that fresh produce has a shelf-life, it is crucial that the expert coordination and management of delivering 1.6 million tonnes of freight a year is not compromised.
Challenges faced in IT infrastructure
When at rural sites, Lindsay Australia finds that there are limitations around link speeds and the ability to track their goods accurately – especially at the warehouse – for their existing stock. This resulted in the IT team having to manage the network of each of the 34 locations that the company operations in manually.
In a bid to simplify their IT and support remote access, the IT team worked with Cisco to explore new wireless technologies – leading them to incorporate the Cisco Meraki solution which would not require them to manually schedule per location upgrade.
Benefits from real time data access
“The Cisco Meraki solution is a cloud managed solution. So, all your networking infrastructure, are all cloud managed,” said Robert Hodgkiss, IT Infrastructure Manager, Lindsay Australia.
“We can now schedule a per location upgrade that we can schedule over the weekend, and it will be done when we come back Monday. The firmware would also be upgraded across all the switches and infrastructure in that location.”
The Meraki solution also provides the warehouse staff with real-time access to data from the scanners – that are either fixed to the forklifts or handheld handgun scanners – through wireless access points. This allows them to see the locations of their stocks and freight in real time. Furthermore, in terms of scalability, Lindsay Australia is easily able to drop another site or location using the solution.
“We are implementing more Meraki kits and we are also expanding our fleet in respect to connected docks to give real-time data of vehicles, freight, and personnel,” adds Hodkiss.
