Fleet Management Solutions: Effective fuel management and lowering operating expenses Dashmir ISTREFI 1, Betim ÇIÇO 2 1,2 FTI, Polytechnic University of Tirana 1 d.istrefi@gmail.com, 2 bcico@abcom-al.com Abstract The purpose of the paper is to describe how technological innovation in the field of M2M (Machine to Machine) communication can help companies grow their businesses in times where cutting additional costs is the primary goal. Corporations turn their attention to lowering costs in their fleet operations, important strategic decisions and customized solutions. The solution is reliable, scalable and comprehensive that fits the needs and demands of the existing companies on the market. It scales to all possible fleets of all sizes, and the paper also identifies how the solution can improve operations, asset utilization. Although the number of connected devices, machines that require connectivity is increasing, so far they have not been widely adopted in the South East European region, and the research examines the reason for not fully acceptance of the fleet management solution. But the challenges of lowering operating expenses, countering high fuel costs and preventing wasteful and unauthorized fuel spending has made companies to consider communication-based systems that would provide the tools needed to control it. The paper also touches the points of infrastructure that is available and what is being developed around the ecosystem to deliver the new service, in comparison to other methods or technologies that can substitute the new developed service. It consists of features such as track and control fuel spending patterns, modifies driver behavior. The result from this use case showed improved driver behavior and reduced fuel costs. Keywords: Fleet Management Solution, Innovation Tools, Reducing operational costs 1. Introduction Recent technological developments in several of industries such as automotive industry, Healthcare, Electricity, Banking and Retail have led to discovering new business models and created new market potential. On the other hand Telecom companies that have already created a high penetration level on most of the existing markets are in a search for new challenges that would enable them further growth within the industry. This growth would be in the field of M2M communication where the number of connected devices raises and is estimated that the number of connectable machines is five times greater than the amount of humans [1]. The paper explores how M2M business in automotive industry related to Fleet Management could support businesses to grow and take control over your business. Cost reduction continues to be the main challenge of main fleets today, followed by the need of increasing the driver s productivity. Companies that run several of businesses and are in need of such solution can be identified in different segments, and those mainly include: Transport and logistics companies, they operate large fleets that need to know where they are located and how to optimize their transport routes, or ensure that the goods which are transported are secure Taxi companies, real-time tracking of their vehicles and additional monitoring functionalities to keep costs under control Public transport companies, mainly include bus transportation system for local, regional or international transport Security agencies, mainly track their fleet for security reasons Other companies, that are in need to track their fleet in order to reduce their operational costs 1
For this research paper TELTONIKA FM1100 and FM4200 [2] Fleet Management terminals are used. The proposed solution is targeting specific use cases of transport and logistics and taxi companies. The software for reporting, monitoring and managing the fleet is hosted on cloud infrastructure and can be easily accessed by the end customer without any additional need of expensive servers, or additional software/hardware installations. Part 2 of the paper elaborates the solution that is developed in order to improve Business effectiveness and with the help of intelligent algorithms help companies to focus on the areas that are critically important for the fleets overall performance. Part 3 presents successful use case and learning from such implementations and the new innovative business models that are realized using the proposed solution. The following part of the paper presents one conducted survey and some key findings that derived from that survey. The last part presents the results and the conclusions that are drawn by using the proposed work from this paper and changes on driver s awareness. 2. Fleet Management System The system for fleet management offers powerful features, and enabling such a system involves the following components: GPS device for tracking the vehicle, GPRS module on the device to transfer data through cellular networks public infrastructure, cloud infrastructure [3] to host the server and database, and access to GUI (web interface) that the customer has as a point for managing his fleet. Figure. 1. Overview of a fleet management system Various research papers in the field of M2M are made as a proof of concept. Persson in [4] describes how multi-agents are illustrated within a smart parking management application. Other research papers in the field are explained in [5], [6], [7] where the research paper [7] successfully tested and implemented the Alcohol detection in the vehicles that when alcohol will be detected the led from the experiment will glow. This implementation is also important for improving driver behavior and increasing the overall productivity. Research paper presented in [8] ex-plains how SMS technology can help to locate the vehicle. The proposed work collects positions of the vehicle via GPS receiver and then sends the data of positions to specialized server by the SMS service. After that the position of the mobile vehicle will be displayed on Google Map. The main disadvantage with this solution is that the system offers 2
only live tracking and historical reconstruction. Table 1 shows in detail what is available and where there is still room for improving the service. Following pictures (Figure 2. and Figure 3.) display how can a company track live their vehicle or create a historical reconstruction of where their vehicles were moving in the past and even fuel administering part. The end user can easily click and display what is most important for him to follow and everything being just only one click away. Live tracking means that the customer can see in real time and check current location of the vehicle shown on Google Maps. Additional information that the system can provide is whether the vehicle is moving, what direction is moving and the speed which the vehicle is moving. Figure. 2. Live tracking & historical reconstruction Figure. 3. Fuel administration & servicing alarms Historical construction builds all the movements of the vehicle and shows them with a graphical line in the maps and all this info is available due to the frequent updates that the device is sending to the Data server. What is important is that this are not the only benefits that come with the tracking and Fleet management solution. Additional sensors are available and can be used for different purposes. Tested in the system for the purpose of the research paper include the following: Temperature sensors provide information about the level of the temperature within the area where installed. This is relevant for transport companies that export goods which require a certain level of temperature when transporting them such as meat, milk and other. Fuel sensors detect the fuel level of the vehicle 3
Seating sensors update about the number of passengers that are present in the vehicle Taximeter sensor counter of taximeter and the amount that has been counting Driver identification whether an authorized driver is driving the vehicle The fleet management solution brings about a fundamental change in relationship between utility and its customers. The utility gets access to a wealth of information about the position and other parameters. 3. Success factors and Benefits Fleet management can optimize capital assets while minimizing operations and maintenance costs. Unlike in the case of manufacturing large-scale installations offer limited economies of scale. While the cost of vehicle tracking technology decreases over time as volumes increase, the cost of installation and logistics remains the same and it is estimated to account for half of the total cost. Thus the ability to execute an efficient rollout is therefore the most critical factor for achieving high return of investments in vehicle tracking. Benefits for the businesses, in terms of Technological investment: No installations Only license buying and monthly fee for using the service Improves accuracy through timely feedback Replaces manual work with automation Saves costs Enables faster service due to real time data Access through a single interface 4. Successful use cases For the purpose of the research paper, impact on a taxi company was measured in order to quantify the success of Fleet Management solution over not having a solution at all. Before providing a solution to a customer it is important that you understand their daily business problems, and for taxi companies following problems were identified: Dispatching system for communicating with the drivers does not give clear picture where the vehicles are located and where can the closest taxi to the customer be found Sometimes taxi drivers use to transport customers without running the taximeter on Charged fuel is not always the same with the fuel that is in the vehicle Some of the cases are simply to improve the efficiency of their fleet and rest to prevent missuses from their employees. Live tracking: First issue with the dispatching system is solved by the live tracking feature which gives you overview of where the vehicles are located. It then allows you to directly communicate with the drivers Garmin device by sending a notification where is the destination which he should follow. Alerts: Creating automatic alerts that can be sent directly to the administrator if certain criteria are set such as over-speeding, disconnected device. Point of interest: Find out in a glance whether your driver is following the directions or the points that are set and approved. Connected devices: The issue of driving passengers with the taximeter turned off in order to earn some cash privately is solved by installing a sensor on the taximeter and additional sensors in the seats of the taxi vehicle. This way whenever the system alerts that the taximeter is 4
not running and the sensors are telling that there are passengers in the vehicle then the driver is misusing the working hours for making side money. Fuel control: Fueling the tanks has been a problem for some time as there is a potential for misusage by the drivers. What was tested in this use case is that fuel sensors help to overcome the issue. The administrator can in any time check what is the current fuel level and how many liters of fuel was inserted in the tank of the vehicle. 5. Survey and key findings As a follow-up of previous published work [9], a survey was conducted for companies that operate with different fleet sizes to understand how telematics and GPS devices are currently utilized within their company and why are their future intentions when it comes to this solutions. Total surveyed companies were 34 that operate within the territory of Republic of Macedonia. The respondents of the research were grouped into three segments: a) Companies that are currently using fleet management solution proposed in the paper b) Companies that are considering using a fleet management solution c) Companies that are not considering fleet management solution For the companies that are not using fleet management solution the main barrier for not using Fleet management solution is the high cost of implementing such solution within their operating fleet. On the other side the companies that were already using the proposed solution the main three reasons for using the solution were improving driver behavior, route productivity and fuel savings. The companies that are considering implementing such solution list fuel savings as the main reason for evaluating a fleet management solution. 6. Conclusions Most fleets understand the need for a fleet management solution and are making the move to implement if they haven t done so already. Many companies are unsure of the ROI (return on investment) that such solutions would bring in the region but the concerns for improving driver behavior, route productivity, and fuel savings are pushing companies to consider such solutions. We can also conclude that fuel cost savings and sustainability are becoming significant factors for those companies. References [1] European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Machine to Machine Communications, MWC, Barcelona February 2011, [Online]. Last accessed May 2012, Available: http://www.etsi.org/website/document/events/etsi%20m2m%20presentation%20during%20mwc%2 02011.pdf [2] Teltonika, Official Web Site [Online]. Available: http://www.teltonika.lt/en/pages/view/?id=10), Last accessed 25 April, 2012. [3] K. Stanoevska-Slabeva, et al., Grid and Cloud Computing: A Business Perspective on Technology and Applications, Springer, 2010. [4] C. Persson, G. Picard, F. Ramparany, A Multi-Agent Organization for the Governance of Machine-to- Machine Systems, International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, 2011 [5] P. B. Jeon, et al., Semantic Negotiation-based Service Framework in an M2M Environment, International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, 2011 [6] G. Coulson, et al., Flexible experimentation in Wireless Sensor Networks, Communications of the ACM, January 2012 [7] A. Alexe, R. Ezhilarasie, Cloud Computing Based Vehicle Tracking Information Systems, IJCST, Vol. 2, Issue 1, March 2011 [8] Thuong Le-Tien, Vu Phung, Routing and Tracking System for Mobile Vehicles in Large Area, The Dept. of Electrical Electronics Engineering, HCM University of Technology, Vietnam 5
[9] D.Istrefi, B. Cico Fleet Management Solution To Gain Total Control Of Your Business Times, 7-8 June 2012, International Conference for Information Systems and Technology Innovation, ISBN 978-9995-6377-8-1, Tirana, Albania Dashmir ISTREFI has graduated the Faculty of Computer Science Technologies in 2007. He holds a MSc diploma in Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship from The University of Sheffield in 2010 and he had gone through various of positions since 2010 when he joined the staff of the teaching assistant for Information Technology. Currently he is student of Third Cycle studies, Doctoral school Information and Communication Technologies, at the Faculty of Information Technology. 6