Transcript
Speaker: Hello, my name is Stephen Kilgore and I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain Magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries.
Speaker: Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwit from Numat Systems. Powerful dual impact binwhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry.
Speaker: Learn more today at binwhip.com. Today, my guest is Jonathan Mendenblik, Marketing Manager at Wallingham. He stopped by to talk about the advantages of using GPS to make sure feed is being delivered to the right tank on the farm.
Speaker: We talk about how these systems work, what they offer feed mills that use them, and how facilities can get a system like this up and running. I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out with the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe.
Speaker: If you're listening online, sign up for the Feeding Grain newsletter, Industry Watch, to see when new podcasts drop and stay up to date with all of the news from around the industry. Now, on to the show. Hi, Jonathan. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker: I have known you... Geez, really since I started in the industry, since we were both young bucks back, what, 12 years ago or so? Yes, been a while.
Speaker: But for anyone who might not be familiar with you, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and what you do and kind of your relationship to the whole industry? My name is Jonathan Metemblek. I'm the marketing manager for Walenga Incorporated. and We build a complete line of feed and grain equipment. of course, our bulk feed trailers, right? And then our pneumatic conveying systems for the feed and grain industry. I've been marketing manager for quite some time.
Speaker: It's our family business, so it's that's it's come a long ways over the last... Actually, we just celebrated our 70th anniversary last year, so it's come a long ways. Things um things have been good.
Speaker: Yeah, it's always nice to see a family business still doing it after 70 years. But you're here today to talk about new technology that you guys have been launching on your trailers. You've been using for a while. It's using GPS location matching to make sure that your feed bodies are matched up to the location they need to be in the bin they need to do deliveries.
Speaker: Can you tell me a little bit more about what GPS location matching is and how adding it to feed bodies has really helped to kind of address some pain points in the industry?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. So this, this has been something that it's kind of been an issue for quite some time. And over the last number of years, we've kind of been looking at with our customers ways to mitigate this, this issue of delivering the wrong feed to the wrong bin. So yeah, I guess as far as how the GPS location matches, matching works is of course, we all know it can be relatively easy and common for feed deliveries to be confused or mixed up from time to time, right? Between
Speaker: intended delivery destinations and what have you, right? Human error is a very real thing. You can have new drivers changing routines and things like that, right? People covering for other people.
Speaker: Mistakes happen, right? So things can get disrupted. There's all kinds of different factors that could be involved with different errors being made and and potentially tons of feed could be put into the in incorrect destination bin, right? Things like that can, they could devalue, right? Organic flocks, medication could get into the wrong animals, all that kind of stuff. So I guess another thing would be at the, yeah, at the, at the very least, delivering, delivering mistakes often require the mill to have to go and retrieve it. Right. And then, and then put the correct feed in the bin. So.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's the best case scenario. Like you said, giving medicated feed to the wrong animals could cause a really big issue if you're ah not careful. Just having to need go and get it and having the time loss and everything seems like best case scenario.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Can you tell me then how this technology actually like works? How does it stop someone from delivering or unloading that feed into the wrong bin or the wrong farm or wrong location?
Speaker: The way it works is obviously GPS coordinates are extremely accurate, right? So what we do is each destination, so each farm has multiple or can have multiple bins on that farm. So each bin actually has a GPS coordinates, right? So the top of that bin can have the potential to have a very unique GPS coordinates.
Speaker: So using geofencing, right, established around that area, that destination, basically we can map the top of the bin to a GPS coordinates, right? So then at the mill with the software, we can determine, okay, this bin has this GPS coordinates, and then you can assign the bin inside the trailer to only unload at that specific bin on the farm. So this can prevent human error from accidentally opening the wrong compartment or gate in a trailer at the wrong destination.
Speaker: so What we do is the first time a trailer with this technology goes to a location, you actually train the GPS location with the boom position to the top of the bin and give each bin a unique GPS coordinates. So back at the mill, when they fill that trailer, they can assign the pockets on the trailer to certain GPS locations.
Speaker: It's weird because GPS has been around for so long now, and you don't really like think about advancements in that technology, but you are right. It's much more accurate than it used to be kind of make something like this possible.
Speaker: Yeah. And actually, that when we first started dabbling in this, we didn't even use GPS. We were using ah RFID tags. So through with that technology, which is not nearly as accurate as GPS is. So back when we started doing all this with the RFID thing, it was pretty cool. But now with GPS, we can be even more accurate.
Speaker: Yeah, as you were saying, and just like the boom over the bin, being able to mark that location, that seems incredibly neat at this point. I didn't realize that stuff. I mean, Google Maps can't even get my car face in the right direction at first. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so like I said, when we go out on the first trip, the GPS receiver on the end of the boom on the trailer, when it's over top of, let's say, bin A, that has a very unique GPS location.
Speaker: It's very different than compared to the top of bin B, which is which can be another 80 to feet over, right? That top of that bin, when that boom is over top of it, it's at a totally different GPS location. So we but basically, we train it and we map it all out. It all goes into the software back to the Well, and this technology also must help in other ways as well, right? you Beyond just wrong deliveries, i imagine the record-keeping ability would be great. You now know exactly when a vehicle was at a bin and unloading versus before where you kind of had to take everyone's word for it.
Speaker: Yeah, so now they have records of every single load, each pocket inside the trailer, what bin it went into on the farm. They have all these records that they can go back and look at. It keeps very good track of all that stuff.
Speaker: So if someone's interested, what is the setup like? So can you get it involved in feed bodies you already have? Do you need new equipment? When someone buys it, do they set it up on their own? how does all that work?
Speaker: Yeah, we can integrate it on existing trailers. It's basically the hardware inside the controls, inside the control box of the trailer. And then obviously you've got your GPS sensor positioner on the boom, and then the software back at the mill.
Speaker: that keeps track of all the information too it also is integrated very well with existing mill software so it's pretty painless and like i said before once you start to use it you basically you have every time you go to a facility or a farm you have to map that you have to train the trailer on that farm to the specific bins that it's going to and it only has to be done once per farm so after it's been trained on that farm can do the next one and then it it retains all that information for later trip yeah you can train as many bins as you want the data is there so if you have a hundred farms you deliver to you can train for each one right yeah that's correct
Speaker: Awesome. And what if, say, the driver still has full control, though, right? If they need to manually override, if they need to do something, it allows them to do it. Does it then, like, keep track of when you had to do that? So you know exactly what's going on in the bin, which seems like one of the coolest features to me is the fact that this whole thing is just you can now know exactly how your feed's being delivered. But the driver's still in full control, though, right? They can do a manual override. They can do that kind of thing.
Speaker: There are different security measures in place, right? Obviously things like this have to come with manual overrides because human error is still a thing, right? Even when they load the trailer at the mill and and the software, a person that's assigning the loads to that trailer can make a mistake. And there is still the ability for the driver let's say the driver gets to the farm and then there's an issue with the gps location and won't unload or something like that they can easily get in touch with either the fleet manager or dispatcher or whomever to get a unique code that they can get in and unlock and then be able to continue on with their delivery at that destination and then everything can be relocked as well for the rest of the trip so it's all kind of those fail safes and things like that are built into it too so and then
Speaker: All your load reports are automatically updated to a database, right? So they can look at what actually went where and what went wrong. and Excellent. Yeah, that's the perfect the level of technology, right? I want it to assist, but I want to still feel like I'm in control.
Speaker: Does it integrate with other software? You mentioned all the data goes back. Is it proprietary software that you guys have? Can people integrate it with their client management systems? How does that work? Yeah, so most feed mill management software systems and truckloading systems can implement modules of their software system to automatically pass.
Speaker: required data packages to the trailer. Each time the the feed is loaded, avoids the need for extra work for a whole entire different system to put in a data entry into. So it's, it can be worked into existing systems.
Speaker: And then the way it works is the communication from the software is actually transferred. That data is transferred to the software on the trailer through a secured wifi connections. So as soon as the trailer enters the mill yard, it's It automatically, when it connects to the mail Wi-Fi, it automatically connects with the software to let it know that it's there, what happened to the load, and then uploads all the data. And then when they fill the trailer up again with a new load and they assign all the pockets to the different destinations, and then and all that gets communicated via Wi-Fi connection.
Speaker: Finally, a good reason to expand your Wi-Fi network at your mill. I'm sure everybody will enjoy that. This seems like a really cool piece of technology and part of this like package of, at least the way I think about it, which is more efficient mills.
Speaker: That's how we save money going in the future, right? We're more efficient. We're more accurate. We're better at record keeping. We're doing all that stuff. Looking towards the future... What enhancement, what additional features are you developing for your system?
Speaker: What do you guys see coming down the pipeline of, well, really, you're the experts on the future of feed body technology? The whole feed lock thing is very important to customer service and being more efficient, that kind of thing, right?
Speaker: We're of course always looking at ways to make this better. We spend a lot of time consulting with our customers on feedback, especially with the ones that are using this feed lock technology in the field. How can we make it better to We're looking at different ways to make the user interface better, different features based on customer feedback.
Speaker: We're looking at different ways to enhance the the reliability and speed of the the Wi-Fi connection between the the data at the mail and the data on the trailer. And yeah, like like I said, adding features and also enhanced ways to search but the database of delivery reports and things like that. I guess that would kind of fall into user interface and things like that. so So always looking at ways to to be on the a leading edge.
Speaker: Well, that sounds exciting. so anyone who's interested out there, where should they go to find more information? Yeah, so a lot of the information on our feed trailers and our feed lock systems can be found on our website, walinga.com.
Speaker: We've also got pretty good social media presence. A lot of our social media accounts can be accessed via our website. Check us out on YouTube as well. Also, a number of different trade shows that we attend.
Speaker: that a lot of this technology can be seen in person. So yeah, next shows that we'll be at are available on our website too. So come in and stop by and check us out online. Yeah, definitely. I know I will at IPPE this year. I always love going and seeing the feed bodies. It's some of the most exciting feed equipment there.
Speaker: We always very much look forward to that show. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you come back again to talk to us more. And everyone out there listening, thank you so much. And until next time, stay safe.
