Interview with Dalemans

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Specialists in gas detection for more than 40 years, Dalemans is a Belgian company based in Remicourt that works across Belgium, Luxembourg, and the neighbouring countries. From designing gas detectors through to assembly, by way of sales, installation, repair, and maintenance, its team of around sixty people covers a broad span of work.

With 15,000 to 20,000 installations in Belgium alone, Dalemans has developed deep technical expertise in systems that automatically trigger the right protective measures.

Every situation is assessed case by case. "We work a great deal in boiler rooms, with explosive gases, but also in car parks, where the gases are both explosive and toxic: the principles of prevention are the same, but the protection mechanisms are different," explains Gabriel Dalemans. The founder's son, he coordinates quality, safety, health and environment at Dalemans and heads its Project Management Office.

In a sector where the stakes are this high, the challenges are many, starting with safety: of the installations, but also of the engineers.

"We are extremely vigilant about every one of our employees being able to work safely. We want to set an example," says Mr Dalemans, pointing to the company's VCA certification, which attests to sound occupational safety practice.

Dalemans is just as attentive to environmental questions: carrying the NATAGORA label, the company covers 70% of its electricity consumption with photovoltaics and invests in R&D to adapt to new products beyond gas and fossil fuels.

Becoming more responsive

It was in this spirit of modernization that, in 2015, the company decided to adopt an ERP, just as its two entities (one devoted to products, the other to services) were merging. Spanning manufacturing, production, sales, and services, the business had to find a way to bring several databases together.

To lead the project, Dalemans turned to NSI, a Belgian IT integrator known for staying close to its customers and for its expertise in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) and AX ERPs, which it deploys for companies operating in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Canada.

Dalemans migrated to Microsoft Dynamics Navision (later Business Central), which serves it for production, stock, orders, supplier and customer management, and accounting. One weak link remained: planning, still handled by an in-house tool that was beginning to show its limits as the company grew.

"Our work involves a great many constraints: technicians' skills, team availability, equipment required, job priorities, estimated durations, progress tracking... A significant share of that information still had to be checked or filled in by hand," says Mr Dalemans.

It was to close that gap that Dalemans turned to Dime.Scheduler. "It let us integrate field processes much more closely with our management data, which suited our new organization and our digital ambitions."

The goal was to cut administrative work, to respond better to last-minute changes, and to give our teams and our customers a more reliable schedule.

- Gabriel Dalemans

Planning built for the field

A former planner himself, Mr Dalemans is quick to point to the time saved by Dime.Scheduler's various features. In the tool, planners get a complete overview and can filter jobs by type (servicing, commissioning, breakdowns, repairs, new installations) and by urgency, as well as assign technicians according to their skills and service area. The planner no longer has to know all of this by heart: it is now filtered and proposed automatically.

Without this tool we would have to multiply the number of planners, and we would lose profitability.

Another strength of the software: location. With technicians spread across Belgium, the tool maps their route for every job. "It lets us be responsive for our customers, but it also stops a technician driving too far and getting tired. On top of that, limiting journeys is good for the environment and more efficient financially, for us as much as for the customer."

The field in your pocket

Out in the field, technicians gain fluidity too, thanks in particular to the Dime.Scheduler mobile app, which gives them a daily, graphical view of their jobs and the equipment they need, straight on their smartphone. They can also launch GPS from the app to drive to a customer, whose contact details stay available if needed.

Eight years after it was rolled out, Dime.Scheduler is fully woven into Dalemans' day-to-day operations, whose needs have only grown more complex as the company has expanded. Today, with around twenty technicians in Belgium and ten in Luxembourg, planning has become a priority in its own right for Dalemans, which fully intends to keep pace with the changes in the European energy sector and stay close to its customers.

Dalemans in brief

Remicourt (Liège) · 60 employees · 15,000 to 20,000 installations · 30 technicians