A few kilometres north of the VW main factory in Wolfsburg, the Volkswagen Group has set up its own office city for its IT specialists. This reduced the number of IT locations from 43 to three, explained Martin Hofmann, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of VW, at the opening. For the computer experts, travel times of 40 minutes were eliminated several times a day. The mega complex consists of three buildings plus the outdoor facilities. These include innovatively designed office space for around 1,500 hardware and software experts. In addition, there is a building with a company restaurant with around 550 seats. The building complex is already designed for future extensions and also has 1000 parking spaces. In December 2018, Bamberger Favendo GmbH was contracted to supply hardware and software to ensure seamless indoor and outdoor navigation via a mobile application in order to further optimise routes in and around the Volkswagen digital centre.
In a first step scheduled for two years, a main building will be equipped with the necessary hardware to enable comfortable indoor navigation. The approximately 500 BLE beacons communicate with the Favendo whitelabel app, which helps employees and guests find their way around the complex and navigate without any problems. A proximity function provides users with additional information on selected points of interest. In a further step, the Favendo SDK is to be integrated into a future Volkswagen app.
“We are very proud that we were able to successfully convince a company like Volkswagen AG with our solutions. Thanks to its many years of project experience, Favendo has unique expertise in positioning and navigation and an extremely mature product. Nevertheless, it is not everyday to win a client like Volkswagen, for whom trust and reliability are the most important currencies,” says Favendo CEO Arnaud Becuwe.
In addition to other projects, Favendo has already implemented the indoor navigation for FRAPORT at Frankfurt Airport and on the new cruise ships of MSC Cruises. Especially with the technical implementation of the navigation as an on-premises solution on the cruise ships, Favendo strengthened its expert status in the field of indoor navigation.