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What Van? Awards 2022: Innovation Award – Locks 4 Vans
Date: Friday, December 17, 2021
Security specialist Locks 4 Vans’ dedication to innovation is rubber stamped by the fact that it invested £2.5m in opening an Innovation Centre this year at its headquarters in Gravesend, Kent.
The firm says the purpose of the Innovation Centre is to anticipate light commercial vehicle attack methods and to deliver cutting edge security solutions to mitigate the risk of theft for its customers. It now has the capability, in-house, to rapid-prototype, which it claims is a game changer for the entire business.
As a result of this investment in its workshop technology, machinery and engineering and technical teams, Locks 4 Vans has reduced the lead time for solving a security problem from weeks or even months to just days. With the new Innovation Centre underpinning its business, Locks 4 Vans has the capacity to identify criminal activity by the close monitoring of external feedback and identify potential criminal activity by auditing the vulnerabilities of vans in-house to stay one step ahead of any thieves targeting vans.
Once engineers have identified a van’s vulnerabilities, they look for an effective solution by using CAD (computer-aided design) to bring an idea to life. Combined with 3D scanning technology, they can progress an idea to the 3D printing and fabrication stage in the workshop to arrive at a prototype that can be tested in the Corrosion Testing Chamber.
Locks 4 Vans then reviews the prototype solutions both internally with its engineers and externally with a closed customer group of designated testers. Then, when proof of concept has been achieved, Locks 4 Vans rolls out production to locally sourced businesses. In order to protect its customers’ LCVs, Locks 4 Vans constantly monitors and seeks to anticipate attack method trends.
This is only effective if it can act to combat thieves’ methods quickly, which is why being able to rapidly develop security solutions via the Innovation Centre is crucial.
Locks 4 Vans is driven to improve standards across the entire security industry and prides itself on delivering a proactive response to its commercial customers to minimise criminal activity.
Ultimately, investment in the facility drives its innovation process and the firm has increased its new product development capacity by 65%. It has delivered a range of new products in the past six months alone, including a driver’s door replacement lock for the Ford Connect, an upgrade to its anti-peel shielding product and a suite of cargo locking solutions for LCV’s and HGV’s. Locks 4 Vans is also the go-to supplier for security solutions for electric vehicles. By working alongside electric vehicle manufacturers, the engineering team is anticipating new types of criminal attacks and vulnerabilities specific to these vehicles in order to be able to create future proof solutions.
Highly Commended: SmartWitness
Artificial Intelligence Driving Events (AIDE) is an AI-powered software that significantly improves van fleet safety and driving behaviour by providing more accurate insights and actionable data related to video captured by telematics cameras. It also increases fleet manager productivity, especially for fleets with large numbers of vans, by reducing false alerts as much as tenfold.
This cloud-based add-on to SmartWitness’s software platform increases the accuracy of video telematics technology by applying a wide range of contextual factors through both artificial intelligence and machine learning. The resulting decrease in false positives limits the number of events requiring manual review by fleet managers, avoids unnecessary driver coaching sessions and boosts driver morale.
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