In many industries, even the smallest change can have the biggest impact. When it comes to operating and managing fleets, you know all too well how incremental improvements can go the extra mile. So, we’re going to take a look at what fleet efficiency means and the various ways in which you can optimize your fleet’s performance.
What is Fleet Efficiency?
Fleet efficiency is directly correlated to fleet management, so let’s start by defining what we mean by each term. Fleet management refers to the oversight and maintenance of commercial motor vehicles, including: vans, trucks, specialist vehicles, cars, forklifts, and trailers, etc. Fleets can also include ships, aviation machinery, private vehicles, trailers, shipping containers, and the like.
Fleet efficiency equates to efficient management, which involves:
- Fleet safety
- Fuel economy
- Fleet productivity
- Delivery times and hours of service
While that’s a lot to consider, fleet efficiency refers to optimizing these key metrics in order to ensure productivity and cost savings. The goal is to maximize output while minimizing input, and it is a summation of the various metrics involved.
For businesses, fleet efficiency has a direct impact on the bottom line, as well as worker safety and satisfaction. It is in everyone’s best interest, including customers, to make fleet efficiency a primary focus. Luckily, there are many technologies, including speech AI tools, that aid in this endeavor (we’ll touch more on them shortly).
How to Assess Your Current Fleet Efficiency
In order to improve upon anything, you must first know its status. To assess your current fleet efficiency, consider the following:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Fleet Efficiency
For starters, if it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed. There are several key performance indicators (KPIs) to be aware of when it comes to fleet efficiency. Let’s take a look at some of the most salient:
- Cost Control: total cost per mile, fuel expense, taxes and registration, parts and labor costs
- Maintenance Measurements: repair turnover rate, downtime
- Safety: accidents per quarter, the use of telematics to monitor driver behavior like braking and speeding
Tools and Technologies for Monitoring Fleet Performance
There exist seemingly endless technologies to help track fleet performance and monitor drivers and vehicles, such as:
- Telematics: GPS, sensors, and dash cams allow for management and oversight from anywhere
- Blockchain: Blockchain technology allows for smart contracts securely and transparently through an immutable ledger that records every transaction without risk of tampering
- Speech AI: Speech AI solutions like aiOla present a first-of-its-kind technology that understands business-specific jargon. This means that maintenance professionals, inspectors, fleet managers, and any other party can speak through task lists in their native language and accent, all the while keeping their eyes up.
Ways to Optimize Vehicle Utilization
How do you go about optimizing fleet utilization and efficiency? These are a few of our best recommendations that have been tried and proven to work:
Route Optimization Techniques
A route optimization algorithm is a software-based tool that ingests all the data of where a vehicle must go and provides the best possible route and plan to save costs and time. These models often involve machine learning and artificial intelligence to resolve even the most complex of route challenges.
Implementing Vehicle Tracking Systems
Fleet managers have a lot on their plate, and it’s not in their wheelhouse to hit the road with every driver, of course. Instead, a vehicle tracking system can be implemented to provide real-time updates, location tracking, and necessary alerts for maintenance schedules.
Utilization of Telematics for Real-Time Monitoring
As alluded to above, telematics enables onboard diagnostics that can track vehicle movement, behavior, and location all in real-time. This data is sent to the cloud for easy access, storage, and analytics. By analyzing this information, fleet managers can gain insights and spot patterns to make informed decisions.
The Importance of Fleet Maintenance and Repair
Another key component of obtaining fleet efficiency is properly caring for vehicles by upholding consistent maintenance schedules and speedy repairs.
Regular Maintenance in Fleet Efficiency
Regular maintenance helps to make sure that vehicles will operate safely, efficiently, and reliably. By being proactive about maintenance and repairs, you’ll be able to reduce costs, maximize the vehicle’s lifespan, improve safety, enhance fuel efficiency, and even improve customer satisfaction (by reducing delays).
Predictive Maintenance Techniques
Predictive maintenance leverages technology and data analysis to assess a vehicle’s condition in real-time. By doing so, fleet managers and maintenance crews can spot potential issues before they even cause any impact and remedy them to reduce vehicle failures or incidents. By doing so, you can keep more vehicles on the road. To enable predictive maintenance, companies turn to IoT, or Internet of Things, which is connected devices and systems that communicate via the Internet. As such, the necessary data and insights are readily available to take action in a timely manner.
The Benefit of Continuous Improvement and Innovation
Just like fleets are always on the move, so too should fleet efficiency measures, techniques, and efforts be. Fleet managers and business are strongly supported with evolving technology that is designed to enhance fleet performance and understanding.
Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Along with the use of technology, it’s of great importance to foster an environment and workplace culture that supports continuous improvement. To accomplish this, open lines of communication are required. Employees should be made aware of how certain technologies exist to augment and support them, as opposed to replace them. Rather than having to make large, sweeping changes, companies can work on incremental improvements that end up having a big effect over time and are easier to implement. Additionally, don’t forget about staff support, training, and education because even a little bit does go a long way.
Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Innovation
It may seem like every day a new technology, or at least an update is being made to an existing system or tool. Technology evolves rapidly, and it’s up to business leaders to support and promote its use. There are systems to automate tasks, track location and fuel efficiency, predict maintenance needs, access analytics, and more.
A Real-Life Example of Technology in Action
With even the easy deployment of speech AI tools, you can watch your fleet’s management improve seemingly immediately. For example, a leading global shipping courier requires pre-operational truck inspections for every truck before it gets to be cleared to hit the road. When inspectors performed the checklist manually, it took 15 minutes per vehicle, and the mechanics team faced delays when having to address issues. With aiOla’s speech-powered AI, inspectors speak through the checklist without having to manually input any information– aiOla listens and accurately captures the important details. As such, fleet inspections were shortened to just 60 seconds per vehicle, representing a whopping 85% time savings!
The Finish Line
Fleet management and fleet efficiency are inseparable from one another. For fleet managers who are responsible for optimizing fleet operations, technology has proven to be a must-have for tracking, maintenance, analytics, and real-time monitoring of driver behavior. Rather than relying on guesswork, software and solutions have brought data-driven insights into the picture to promote fleet efficiency seamlessly.
FAQs
A couple tips to start on your fleet efficiency journey include: managing fuel costs, proactively replacing parts and scheduling maintenance, optimizing routes, using fleet management software and speech-powered AI tools.
