Digital shopping: BPW Aftermarket Group offers upBox, an intelligent spare parts warehouses for garage premises

• Mobile spare parts warehouse with up to 2,000 parts right at the garage door
• Fully automatic administration makes day-to-day work easier in the garage
• Spare parts container upBox will also be generally available in Europe in the future

Things don’t get much more customer-centric than this: the BPW Aftermarket Group is now offering commercial vehicle garages and hauliers with their own workshops the option of having a mobile spare parts warehouse directly on the company’s premises. upBox is a robust 40-foot shipping container, fully fitted out with shelving, air conditioning, video surveillance and digital radio and security systems – plus a customised selection of 1,300 to 2,000 spare parts that are available around the clock. The details of what is included in the selection are agreed in advance with the garage individually and can be adjusted on an ongoing basis. A patent has been filed for the innovation.

Use of the solution is self-explanatory: each spare part has an RFID tag, and an automatic contactless process records when a part is taken. The system records all incoming and outgoing parts in less than a second and updates the inventory data in real time. Meanwhile, the user can see a list of the part numbers on a computer screen and can check and confirm these on the touchscreen. The billing, reordering and restocking processes are fully automatic. Stocks of spare parts are replenished the next day. This also means that stocktaking – usually a time-consuming and error-prone procedure – can be completed in a matter of seconds, at the click of a mouse.

The BPW Aftermarket Group has already introduced this solution to great success in Finland, where the distances to the nearest spare parts dealer are often very large. The immediate round-the-clock availability and the amazingly simple handling mean that the system is also of interest for other European countries, especially as garages do not need to stock the parts themselves or pay for them up front: only those items that are actually taken out and used are billed for.

Ralf Maurer, managing director of BPW Aftermarket Group Deutschland GmbH, explains: ‘The upBox makes our customers’ day-to-day work much easier. The technology and the data processing systems are already tried and tested after several years of use in Finland. We are delighted to now be introducing this innovation to other countries and are certain that the garages there will be just as enthusiastic about this innovation as the ones in Scandinavia.’

The BPW Aftermarket Group will be demonstrating the upBox for the first time at IAA Commercial Vehicles in Hanover (20–27 September) in Hall 26 at Stand C31 and on the open-air exhibition ground.