A 3 Tonne Kubota Excavator stolen from a construction site in Steeple, Southminster, has been successfully recovered some 20 miles away in Chelmsford thanks to the machine being protected with an AMI tracking device.
The owner of the machine immediately contacted AMI Group when it became apparent that the Excavator had been stolen overnight.
Fortunately the machine was covertly fitted with an AMI tracking system and the company’s monitoring station was able to place the unit in an alarm state so that a Radio Frequency signal would be emitted from its current location.
The monitoring station sent a local Recovery Agent to the location provided by the unit. The homing signal was actually coming from inside a locked building on an industrial site in Chelmsford littered with various items of old plant machinery outside.
In order to gain access to the building, the AMI Recovery Agent contacted the Police and once they arrived on site, they entered the building and found the stolen Kubota Excavator hidden inside on a trailer. The machine has since been returned to the rightful owner.
Peter Stockton, Operations Director of AMI Group said: “Even though the machine was well hidden inside a locked industrial building, the signal of our tracking device was so strong that the Recovery Agent was able to go straight to the location where the stolen machine was.
“We were able to work with the local Police force to recover the machine and make sure it is returned, meaning that our customer totally avoided the inconvenience and huge cost of replacing stolen plant machinery. They were absolutely delighted to be returned with a valuable piece of kit.”
AMI tracking devices are used in conjunction with AMI Nexis, a web-based platform whereby customers can log on to the system to not only use it as an anti-theft deterrent, but as a total fleet management solution.
Following months of development work and consultation with customers, the AMI Nexis portal has recently been enhanced to empower AMI customers with more information than ever before to help locate and manage plant equipment and vehicle fleets more efficiently and safely.
A series of new high tech features have also been added to give organisations full control and visibility of their plant or vehicle fleets.
For example, a new timeline feature has been introduced to allow users to see a quick snapshot of each asset’s activity over the last 24 hours, allowing rapid identification of any assets being used outside working hours or over the weekend.
New features such as a new hours usage widget have also been added to enable users to identify the utilisation of plant equipment or other assets. This enables customers to identify under-use or over-use of plant and help ensure accurate charging for plant use.
One of AMI’s latest innovations is the AMI Nexis AT5, a self-contained, battery operated tracking device which utilises state-of-the-art GPS, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and RF (Radio Frequency) technology.
The AT5 is lightweight, tiny in size (just 21 x 55 x 52mm) and it can be concealed almost anywhere on any asset. Via its advanced battery management software, the unit has the capacity to last up to 20 years and it is backed by IP68 waterproof rating, ensuring it is robust and heavily protected.
The device has the ability to be traced both outdoors and indoors even in very remote locations. In situations where GPS is unavailable, the device relays GSM cell site positions and the internal RF beacon can be activated to assist in locating stolen assets.
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