...The Transmission...
Fleet Management Systems Employ GPS and Cellular Signals to Up Productivity
By Jason Morgan

The screen flickers on. Data pours in, streaming seemingly endless amounts of information — engine idle time, machine location, travel speed and loader usage. A service notice flashes on screen. Your excavator is in dire need of some machine shop TLC.

Flash!

Another notice — a backhoe loader has left its jobsite.

The equipment manager confirms it; he’s putting it to work on a new jobsite. Yesterday the backhoe loader only worked at 20 percent capacity.

It sounds like some futuristic technology — a sci-fi managerial system to control your crew’s and fleet’s maintenance needs and production cycles, saving time and money. In fact, that’s exactly what it is, and it’s available today. Offered by service providers such as HCSS, DPL America, BorgSolutions, EarthwaveTechnologies and LoJack to name a few, fleet management systems provide insight into the daily lives of your machines and their operators.

“There are basically two categories in fleet management,” explains Lance Massey, sales director for BorgSolutions, a company that offers ASTRAL, a Web-based fleet maintenance and tracking system. “The first is automatic vehicle locating [AVL]; that’s knowing where your fleet is and where it’s going. The second is about managing the maintenance and repairs of your fleet, knowing when maintenance is needed, and acting on that information by automating the work order, inventory and purchase order processes needed to keep it working and your costs under control.”

Before you begin tracking machines, you will need the hardware. Several manufacturers, like Caterpillar, Komtasu, Hitachi, John Deere and JLG, now offer their own fleet management tracking systems with hardware installed as standard or optional equipment. While these systems are integrated into the machines by the manufacturer, they can also be installed in some older machines (minus a few features). However, there are a host of offerings from independent providers and you need to find the best system that fits your fleet.

“We work with a lot of smaller, family-owned businesses, but even up through worldwide companies, at the end of the day, it comes down to how much money is going into their pockets,” Massey says. “Asset management helps tell you how much a piece of machinery is costing you to operate and where your bottom line is.”

Imagine an omniscient, bird’s-eye view of your operations. Every machine is highlighted at its location and you know what it’s doing. It’s like a virtual chess game and you’re surveying your pieces, strategically placing them for optimum performance. Knowledge is power, and now that knowledge is at your fingertips, which are on your computer’s keyboard, tracking the position of each piece of equipment in your operations.

“Location of machines is very important. If you have a couple groups of machines, you are able to know where everything is, which is important when you have half a million [dollars] in assets,” says Tony Nicoletti, director of North American sales for DPL America. “You can see where it is but you can also see how much the asset is running. Maybe an operator is fudging numbers and the machine isn’t really running as much as it’s reported. You can take it and move it to a different jobsite.

“For example, we have one customer that if he finds a piece of equipment that is utilized under a certain percentage, he moves it to another job. That saves him from having to rent another piece of equipment. If you set up daily, weekly and monthly reports, you’ll start to see trends. You can find out if you have too many dozers, if you find two that are operating consistently at 10 to 20 percent. Then you can either sell and rent as needed to maximize your asset usage.”

While making sure that equipment is properly and efficiently utilized, there are a few less obvious benefits of knowing where your machines are and what they are doing. The first is time card comparisons. You’ll know the exact hours a piece of machinery worked — its digging and load/carry cycle times, engine idle and machine shutdown. At times, machine operators work long, laborious hours and toward the end of the week, it can be difficult to break those hours down. If there is ever a discrepancy of hours worked, the fleet management system has tracked and logged it.

“By knowing where your equipment is and what it’s doing you can avoid downtime and other things like equipment hoarding,” says Massey. “Project managers are paid on the speed they finish the job, not the profitability, so they horde the machines to make sure there’s no downtime on their project, but oftentimes machines are just sitting around.”

Geofencing, or geozones, is another popular location-driven feature that many GPS fleet management systems offer. No, it’s not some space-age style sword play, but the ability to set up invisible “fences” through the GPS system that confines your equipment. Using the fleet management system’s software (either hard disk-installed or Web-based), a square or circle, depending on the system, perimeter will be set and alerts will be sent when the equipment leaves that defined area.

Security is obviously the first use of geofencing. If a machine is leaving its focus area and isn’t supposed to, there might be a theft. But there is more to geofencing than thwarting wayward thieves.

“Geofencing allows a user to monitor when equipment is on or off the job. This in turn, allows for analysis of material deliveries, routes and utilization of equipment on the job accurately,” says Steve McGough, COO of HCSS, a construction software solutions company out of Houston. “Using cycle-time alerts, it also allows a user to monitor how efficiently a material order is running and if a truck is getting backed up at a jobsite or plant.”

You can also set geofences to keep things out, as opposed to keeping them in. Want to see if your crews are cutting out early? Put a geofence around the local watering hole to see if any of your trucks stop off.

At the end of a job, you can check the detailed data of how your fleet and machines performed to give you a better idea of how they will perform in the future. That will allow you to make more accurate and confident bid estimates. When a fleet management system is first implemented, it can be difficult to see the return on the investment. The post-job overview can provide a data representation of how your fleet has become more efficient and profitable.

Even though massive amounts of data are being collected automatically, the machines can’t organize themselves (yet). So you need to know how to access all the info. The most common way is through Web-based applications. The majority of fleet management system service providers offer an online interface that lets you log on from any computer with an internet connect to check the stats of your fleet. Aside from accessibility, a Web-based interface retains the familiarity of Web site navigation.

“The main reason we chose to be a Web-based service, and our answer to people’s questions over why we don’t provide a shrink-wrapped version, is simple — contractors are more interested in keeping their business running than babysitting their software. They don’t want to depend on an outsourced IT person to keep technology running or spend time teaching new technology to their people,” says Michelle Borg, COO of BorgSolutions. “That’s a headache for them. Cumbersome software is not simple. With this system, it’s intuitive and you can access it anywhere.

“You would be surprised how many people say they love being able to check in on their crews when they are at home. If they have to take the day off, some of them worry that their crews slack off, but they can see what’s going on with the Web-based software from anywhere, at home or on the road.”

A few service providers also offer hard disk-installed software to keep a watchful eye on your machines. HCSS, for example, has The Dispatcher, which is accessed through a network connection when a multiple-user environment is used. This keeps the flow of information in-house.

Through The Dispatcher, with the embedded Microsoft MapPoint software, a user can track his or her equipment, view cycle-time information, utilization, see when equipment is on and off the job and many more tools that allow the user to quickly access what they need. Of course, HCSS also offers Web-based access for checking up on crews anywhere there’s a computer and Internet connection.

Aside from actually operating the machinery, the system interface is where user input may be needed. For most systems, you’ll have to input your machine, be it an excavator, loader, pickup or chassis cab, the hours logged and money spent already in purchase, repairs and maintenance. Once all that info is punched in, the system takes over. In some systems, the fleet management software will track the money spent on a certain machine from then on. The benefit is being able to see machine productivity deterioration over time — letting you know if it’s costing you more money to run a machine than it’s worth.

“The historical information is available back to the day that the unit was first purchased. There is no purging of information,” reports McGough. “HCSS GPS units transmit their data every four minutes and how it is displayed is up to the user. The user can run various reports and on-screen functions that allows him or her to view the information in many ways. It can be displayed as a listing of every line of information received to a summarized version of the information based on jobsites and events triggered.”

If you want to break your fleet up into groups according to job, you can do it. Machine type? Hours logged? Maintenance schedules? Equipment allocation? Region? You got it.

“You are able to slice and dice the data however you want,” says Nicoletti. “It’s as simple as clicking the type of report, how often you want it and what group that machine goes in. And you can export to a spread sheet, which is great for machine guys that are not computer guys; they are more focused on machines rather than logging onto a Web site. Also, someone else can manage the data, pull it off the Web into a spreadsheet and then e-mail it to the guys who need the data.”

Many systems allow the creation of other user accounts as well — ranging from full to extremely-limited access. Using a user name and password system, you can set up additional accounts, though sometimes at an additional cost.

If you want your mechanic to be able to view service reports, you can set him or her up with an account and he or she is able to view the latest service invoices. On the other hand, you can give your equipment manager full range to change input information, reorganize machines, set geofences and beyond. But be careful. That information is your source of power and, although you might trust all your employees, you are first and foremost the person making important fleet decisions and handling input.

“Only about 50 percent of our customers actually have a mechanic account,” says Borg. “Most of the time, they enter in the info and can print off the work orders and give them to their service person. A lot of them don’t want the mechanic to be able to access the information and are more comfortable entering it themselves. If they do have an account, it’s usually the head mechanic or manager that handles the information.”

Information is archived. It has been viewed and now it’s time to demonstrate the full power of fleet management systems. Setting up maintenance schedules, sending service invoices and monitoring machine value is all in a day’s work for a fleet manager. Generally, fleet management systems will let you set predetermined maintenance alerts for when a machine reaches a certain odometer or work-hour threshold.

“By injecting actionable data from fleet management systems into the business cycle, leaders can proactively make decisions on fleet composition, replace vs. repair and fleet staging,” says Doug Mitchell, CEO and founder of RentalMetrics, a subscription-based consulting service operating online — allowing professionals to research available GPS solutions for their equipment, trucks and trailers and identify and calculate ROI for solution deployments across the enterprise. “Also, data can become very powerful when used across the enterprise to streamline transportation, dispatching a driver directly to a machine vs. somewhere on a jobsite or in field service, dispatching a technician to a machine with a proper inventory of parts based on a fault code received at the home office.”

Taking that idea even further, systems like BorgSolutions allow you to create work, quote request and purchase orders and send them off to the proper provider. For example, if you have a John Deere excavator that needs a hydraulic hose or other part, you simply choose the provider, plug in the part name or number, the quantity and cost and send it off. The system will automatically send off an e-mail, if you have entered it in the system, or you can always print the quote or purchase order request off and physically send it off — still saving time and money.

Aside from maintenance, keeping a strict hold on records is a crucial aspect of fleet management. Fuel economy, for instance, is one of the biggest expenses for any fleet. For on-highway fleets — including trucks that transport heavy loaders and excavators to the jobsite — companies have to submit monthly International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) reports to their respective states. Tracking down gas station receipts and mile logs can be tedious, time-consuming work.

Certain systems, like BorgSolutions, can work in tandem with information from fuel management systems such as Gasboy, a manufacturer and marketer of commercial electronic and mechanical petroleum dispensing systems, as well as fleet management. DPL America, on the other hand, offers a report that automatically calculates the mileage per truck, state and month — in essence automating the IFTA data collection process. If you don’t have a fuel management system, you can enter the data into your fleet management program to create a virtual file system that won’t get lost or misplaced.

Organization is the key. You want to be able to assess your assets in a way that best suits your managing style. You’ll also want to be certain that if you invest in a fleet management system that you are prepared to utilize it to its fullest extent.

“Fleet management is only as important as an individual customer makes it,” says John Hinds, chief technology offer for Earthwave Technologies. “Some customers do not have the management or business processes in place to make use of fleet management and for them purchasing fleet management technology is a waste of money. Other companies have put a great deal of effort into optimizing their business and project management processes and for them fleet management technology is the tool they need to implement these processes. For the first customer, fleet management has little to no importance. For the second customer, it has enormous importance.”

Looking toward the sky, it’s hard to imagine a transparent transmission from the cosmos filling your screen with information. But another flashing alert pulls you out of your pondering — looks like the engine idle time on one of your excavators just passed 30 minutes. With a firm grip on the daily actions of your machines, you have the ability to delegate tasks and find the most efficient path for getting work done.

Jason Morgan is associate editor of Utility Contractor.