Epiroc HATCON makes April Fools of thieves
Police successfully recover stolen hydraulic breaker thanks to remote-monitoring device
WHEN a loyal Epiroc customer found one of their new hydraulic breakers had gone missing from site, they turned to Epiroc to help the police track it down. The missing breaker had been supplied complete with Epiroc’s HATCON device which allowed GPS monitoring to show the location of the missing breaker.
The customer who confirmed the breaker was missing on the morning of 1 April, asked Epiroc for help tracking its location. The Epiroc team quickly identified GPS co-ordinates indicating the possible location of the breaker.
They also triggered notifications of the GPS co-ordinates to be sent by the HATCON device every five minutes, and these consistently showed the breaker to be within a very small geographical area which the local police visited.
Having matched their findings on the ground with the GPS co-ordinates being sent by the HATCON device, the police focused their attention on a lorry parked up in the area and broke into it.
Inside the lorry they found the missing breaker along with other stolen machinery. The police immediately took possession of the lorry and its contents with a view to returning them to their rightful owners and started the hunt for the thieves responsible.
HATCON is a remote-monitoring device for Epiroc breakers and drum cutters that keeps track of location and operating hours to improve efficiency and safety. The system monitors every individual tool and keeps customers updated via My Epiroc.
Joel Fuchs, Epiroc’s application specialist for demolition and recycling, said: ‘HATCON provides a new level of control. Customers will always know where their tools are, when they need a service or if any tool is running more than another.
‘The cloud-based platform My Epiroc presents data in a straightforward way to help everyone from operators to fleet managers to make smarter decisions. And since the data are also shared with Epiroc, we can provide better service, such as helping this customer to locate their stolen breaker.’
