What is Fleet Management?

Logistics companies use fleet management in order to manage the vehicles that are used in transportation be it delivery, pickup or both. Fleet management is primarily used by transportation network companies, E-commerce companies, and other companies where transportation is the key. Fleet management works with all kinds of transport mediums like air, water and land.

Fleet management is a complex flow of operational activities and involves everything – right from the vehicle management to keeping a track of vehicle status, driver details, driver behaviour, live GPS tracking, route optimization and a host of other activities.

Issues with existing systems

Every business that involves transportation as their core function has fleet management operations going on. But certain issues hinder most currently available systems like:

Inaccurate GPS traces

• This would be the first and foremost issue that is faced by each an every company that uses fleet management. The vehicle movement and the GPS traces wouldn’t match in real-time. There would at least minor variations.

• Using a third party map matching is quite expensive so we use our own algorithms in map matching that displays the actual path a vehicle has traversed.

  
  

Scalability

Scalability is definitely a serious problem. With the current functioning, companies can scale about only 100,000 devices. Beyond that, if it is more than about 1 million devices the system fails.

Reliability

Fleet management solutions that are reliable is very important that most of the systems fail in doing so. Not having a reliable system will affect the growth of the business.   

Must Read: IoT and Performance

Benefits of an IoT based fleet management system

Even though fleet management can be described as vehicle management in simpler terms, it involves several things that are very beneficial for a logistics company.  

Optimized use of resources

• Manpower: Can analyze how much a fleet driver can work without overloading him with work and not having him idle for a longer time simultaneously. Basically can manage the working capacity of a worker.

• Vehicles: Can analyze the working condition of the vehicle and work on the faults in the early stage rather than after the breakdown in the middle of the transportation.  

• Time: Can analyze the time taken to travel from one point to another from previous records and optimize it further.  

• Fuel: This would one of the biggest way to save cost in fleet management. With proper planning can reduce fuel costs.  

Cost Optimization

• Can cut down unnecessary costs by analyzing previous reports and records most importantly on fuel.

Scaling

• Provide a proper scaling without any failures.

Pilferage reduction

• Can have an eye on the driver by continuous tracking going on. Each and every activity of the fleet driver will be noted like idle time, vehicle movement, etc. Can handover the goods to the driver safely.

Real-time overview of vehicle & driver status

• Driver: As already mentioned each and every moment of the driver will be recorded. It included for how much time he is idle and for how long the vehicle has travelled and the routes that are taken as well. It also analyzes the driving skills of the driver by taking note of the speed.  

• Vehicle: Can check how much fuel is consumed. Even the engine parameters of a vehicle are noted which can be rectified initially.  

Breakdown/Accident reports  

• When there is a breakdown of the vehicle an alert would be sent to the owner immediately. This would help in providing roadside assistance. Even during an accident, the owner will be notified to alert the healthcare institutions for medical emergencies.

Solutions for proper fleet management

• We provide end to end solution for a fleet management system i.e., the well-built devices are brought and registered on the platform and your company can start using it instantly.

• A proper route planning is done which can be optimized further.

• A DVIR (Driver Vehicle Inspection Report) is generated for each and every vehicle by the drivers at the end of the day.

• Driver’s behaviour is recorded which takes his driving skills like speed, brakes usage, how a turn is taken, etc are recorded. Even it includes the accidents caused by the driver(if any). This is displayed in a radar graph which keeps updating according to the behaviour of the driver.

• Have a record of the malfunctions of the vehicle like a number of accidents happened, list of breakdowns, etc.

• User Management

• Zones: Each area will be divided into zones. There can be an unlimited number of zones that can be added.

• Manager: For each zone, there would be a manager where he would be managing the drivers in that particular zone. He has a track of each and every driver in his assigned zone.  

• Business User: A business user will be provided with the list of managers. He will be updated with overall information in a particular zone. The business user will have details like how many drivers a particular zone has, how much time did the drivers in that zone take in transportation, the total number of accidents caused by the drivers in the zone, breakdowns, fuel costs, and much more. Other than tracking the overall operations of the zones, the business user can create a geofence. Creating a geofence will alert him if a vehicle enters or leaves that particular locality. It would also help him in noting how much time did the driver spend in that particular location.

Accuracy and Reliability

In order to provide reliable and accurate solutions, we have used only the best of the breed technologies that are handpicked to scale and perform efficiently even during high-stress scenarios. The technologies that are been used are:

• Solace

• KAA

• MongoDB

• NodeJs

• Aerospike

• Kibana

• AWS IoT

Role of Solace

Solace is a unified messaging broker. It is the leading message broker that can handle several thousands of messages that are received. This will enable our customers to make their businesses work quickly and cost-effectively without any interruptions even if a huge amount of data is collected.

How can IoT transform your business?

If you are having a transport networking company or you are running a food delivery business or any other business that makes transporting as the core operation then fleet management is definitely essential for you. The traditional methods that are used in logistics companies will not generate the right results and ultimately consumes several hours. Having fleet management will automate your transport business without involving manual work. Fleet management will optimize each and everything right from the manpower to vehicle management, fuel optimization, etc. As technology takes care of your business you can concentrate on improving it more.