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Jason Price: Beyond fuel savings: how data can save logistics

fuelLogistics has always been about data and with the onslaught of ‘big data’ solutions, there are no end to the promises being made to analyse every link, nook and cranny in your supply chain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge advocate of the power of data – as a telematics professional I literally live on it. But access to all the data in the world isn’t terribly helpful without the necessary context around it. Having access to the right data, in the right format, at the right time is what helps you to make beneficial business decisions that result in better customer service and an improved bottom line.

Fuel savings and efficiency figures have been the key bellwether of successful telematics implementations for a while now. The majority of sales conversations I have still consist of a potential customer asking how much monitoring their drivers and fleet can save them in terms of fuel costs. While changing routes and driver behaviour can bring fuel costs down, it is by no means the only way that applying telematics data can help your business. Any logistics technology worth its salt should be more than a one trick pony. Still, it gets the conversation started.

For example, we recently ran pilot programmes for a number of customers in different market sectors where we were tasked to demonstrate our telematics solution to help them generate fuel savings. We did this by monitoring the driving style of their trunk and multi-drop fleet drivers and developing a driver engagement programme. The proof of concept exercise resulted in a good return on investment for both fleets, ticking the box of saving fuel costs. According to the final projections, the average projected savings ranged from 3 -8 months ROI. A great result, but by analysing the project’s telematics data, we were able to spot the fact that the company could save even more by tackling lost hours.

We all know that driver tachograph data is needed to be legally compliant. It gives us a picture of distance, speed and driver activity, but it can sometimes be wrongly interpreted or misused. Drivers may forget to put their tacho into break mode or set it to a period of availability (POA) when they are not on a job. Or worse, they may avoid doing this to lengthen their breaks. Going back to the example, we were able to identify that the long distance trunk fleet drivers at the company were exceeding their allotted break time by just over seven hours, per vehicle per week.

Only by analysing the data did we discover that the drivers were consistently taking these unrecorded breaks in lay-bys, service stations or round the corner from depots after making a drop off. Most companies I know are more than happy to forgive a few minutes here or there, as long as they have visibility into what they are agreeing to, but these added breaks were unaccounted for and averaging more than 8 hours per vehicle per week. Gaining those hours back could allow the company to reduce the number of vehicles in their fleet or bring all of their collection services in house, resulting in a huge potential for further cost savings.

Here we find ourselves back in the data conundrum. Knowing this information is helpful, but what can be done about it? Clearly the transport and logistics managers need to be alerted to the problem in the first place so they can discuss it with the drivers and give them a chance to fix it. But even with that box ticked, presenting a spreadsheet full of figures lacks context and can be confusing, easily manipulated and dismissed. Having access to all of the relevant data – including GPS maps of any reported stopping locations — means managers can act on the problem when they have a visual debrief document clearly showing all of the relevant information in one place.

Providing context for data in this way makes it easier to show the driver where the inconsistencies lie and therefore tackle any issues of lost time and stop bad practices before they take route.

After all, fuel savings is important, but you can’t replace lost time.

 

Jason Price from Isotrak

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