The Avans University of Applied Sciences is an educational institute for higher education in Noord-Brabant, created by the fusion of the universities for applied sciences in ’s Hertogenbosch and Brabant in 2004. Avans now has satellite campuses in Breda, Roosendaal, ’s Hertogenbosch and Tilburg. It has 33,000 students and 2,917 staff. With the exception of Roosendaal, all the campuses have been using the smart CombiLocker since April 2020.
The Avans University of Applied Sciences purchased, in total, four CombiLockers, inclusive the WebManager, the control & booking platform, which is hosted by CaptureTech. In addition, different links have been made with the systems used by Avans for identifying and authorising users. Students and staff can reserve an item online and open the locker with the unique QR code that they receive. The implementation of smart lockers saves Avans 10,000 human transactions per year.
Smart lockers contribute to our ambition of making students and teachers more independent by 2025.
To find a new partner for the efficient control of equipment and devices, several places for reference were visited, like the University for Applied Sciences Utrecht, where Nauta Connect’s smart lockers had already been installed. “It was just one of the places we visited”, explains the project leader from Avans, Daniël van Donselaar. “We were also at the municipality of Utrecht. It was on our visits that the CapLocker caught our eye. We had drawn up a list of requirements beforehand that a potential partner had to satisfy. Nauta Connect met most of those demands.”
The smart locker was immediately introduced at four locations, namely two locations in Breda, and in ’s Hertogenbosch and in Tilburg. “We will probably install more lockers in the future in other locations. We mostly use them for things like cameras, laptops and chargers at the moment. In the future, we will probably want to start doing this for scientific equipment, like laboratory parts, skeleton parts and medical supplies. We are implementing smart lockers to achieve several objectives.”
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As well as lockers themselves, the smart locker system also includes the KeyConductor module for storing keys for the shared bicycles. In due course, keys for the car pool can be added to it. “Smart lockers contribute to our ambition of making students and teachers more independent by 2025. The user has to book the product and collect and return it themselves. The automation of the issuing process saves a lot of time. At the service desk, we don’t have to mail people if they don’t return their laptop or camera on time. That used to take up a lot of time.”
Daan van der Hout from the ICT help desk of the Avans University of Applied Sciences: “The system records what is lent out and which things are in the lockers. That works very well this way.” Both Van der Hout and Van Donselaar say that students and staff are very positive about using the CombiLocker. “Less stuff goes missing, mainly because we know better what has been lent out and what has been returned”, says Van der Hout.
If you are curious about our electronic lockers and key cabinets, read the cases below from all sorts of sectors, like universities, hotels, security, cash-in-transit, healthcare, transport and government institutions.
