Fleet Management Industry Needs Standard Technologies

There are several shared initiatives across the trucking industry lately – reducing fuel, going green, paperless deliveries, improving safety, etc. – however one of the most common is supply chain visibility.

At the recent NPTC Conference, many private fleet executives voiced their concern regarding the challenges they face in integrating the many disparate technologies they use in their organization to improve their visibility across their supply chain and increase productivity. Consider the technologies that are often used in most of today’s leading fleets: routing, dispatch, fleet management, warehouse management, maintenance systems, hr/payroll systems, and financial systems are just a few of the core systems needed to run their business. Unfortunately, many of these systems are very insular in their design and provide limited data integration capabilities. For example, two of the most common routing platforms used in the private fleet industry can only export their data as a flat file or .CSV file. The same holds true for the industry’s most widely used dispatch system. Many other systems provide APIs (application programming interface) that are based on proprietary languages or formats.

It’s time for an industry group or consortium to define certain technology standards for integrating transportation systems. If we look at the global software leaders and enterprise application providers, all of them have embraced XML-based web services and service oriented architecture as the standard way to interoperate across disparate applications. This is extremely prevalent in the supply chain arena, where legacy, mainframe applications are now accessible by more current web-based systems. Karen Butner, IBM’s Supply Chain Management Lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value describes SOA as the “Blueprint for Supply Chain Visibility”.

Now is the time to standardize the data made available to and from fleet management systems (assets, accounts, products, driver performance, vehicle performance, delivery data, time and attendance data, etc.) as web services, making them consumable in a standard way by any other system. Cadec will push to be at the forefront of this initiative, and enable fleet managers to achieve better supply chain visibility and improve the overall returns on their technology investments.

Author: Frank Moreno

Fleet Management ROI Discussion at NPTC

From NPTC – While the attendance at this week’s National Private Truck Council’s conference was a bit light compared to year’s past, there was no shortage of news and interesting discussion across the industry. The Benchmarking data presented by NPTC’s Tom Moore highlighted a number of significant trends and observations:

- Customer service (mainly on-time arrivals) remains far and away the number one reason why companies operate their own fleet
- Reducing out of route miles is the top method of increasing fuel efficiency
- There is a increasing interest in leasing of tractors among private fleets
- The amount of Empty Miles Driven increased in 2008 (possible correlation with the increase in fuel prices)
- There has been a major increase in Going Green initiatives in private fleets
- With reduced number of drivers, incentive-based pay plans have increased and are working
- Technology is #10 in the Top 10 Challenges facing Private Fleets (Economy/Costs was #1)

Also, the ROI session was very interesting as leading executives from Giant Eagle, Bridgestone Tire and Cadec customer Mennel Milling presented on ROI from On-board Technology. While the current returns were not surprising (efficiency & productivity gains, automating manual processes, route optimization, reduced idle time, etc.) it was the concerns they highlighted that were of most interest. Common to all speakers and consistent at the conference was the concern about the amount of data their technology systems provided and the challenges around integrating their systems and interpreting the data into meaningful business intelligence.

The concept of supply chain visibility, business intelligence and actionable information is becoming a theme across many vendors. Be sure to consider a system’s ability to provide visibility not just into its own system, but across multiple transportation systems within the infrastructure (such as Cadec’s Insight system). Cadec will be sponsoring an upcoming webcast on this topic with Fleet Owner and NPTC in June. Visit www.cadec.com for details in the coming weeks.

Author: Frank Moreno

Hollywood or Reality? Advanced Fleet Safety Technologies

In 1994, years before 9/11, the motion picture Speed exaggerated the need for improved safety and security systems on a motor coach. Most people over the age of 30 recall the movie. Fast-forward 15 years to 2009 and Hollywood recreates a similar scenario on the CBS television series Numb3rs. Yet in the episode, a new fleet management technology with real-time GPS tracking, covert emergency notification by the driver and remote engine shut-down technology brings the hijacked bus to a controlled stop by safety officials and authorities!

Is this technology real? What about for the trucking industry? With the recent increase in cargo theft and the heightened security around fuel and hazmat haulers, there is clearly a need for combining existing fleet management, AVL and mobile communications products with advanced safety and security features into one system… Check out PowerVue ProTecht Fleet Safety and Security Applications from Cadec Global.

Author: Frank Moreno