Heavy Machinery and Earth Moving Equipment
State-of-the-art solution using vehicle telematics for the integration of vehicle tracking, vehicle management and real-time alarm monitoring. Combining GPS and M2M for enhanced business process and customer experience
This is especially important in the heavy machinery and earth moving equipment sector. As this equipment is very expensive, downtime must be minimised to get the required return on investment.
Fleet managers need help with a range of problems including:
- Not always knowing what their staff are doing, or where they are
- Inefficient scheduling that leads to unnecessary miles travelled and increases equipment, labour and fuel costs
- Theft of equipment and vehicles
- Frequent downtime for routine maintenance and testing
- Ensuring the safety of their staff and vehicles
- Misuse of vehicles.
To manage these problems, the fleet manager requires automated fleet management that records data such as: vehicle location, driver speeds, fuel consumed, miles recorded and employee work time.
Pacific Controls Fleet Management Services
Pacific Controls Fleet Management software suite can address these problems through its state-of-the-art solution using vehicle telematics for the integration of vehicle tracking, vehicle management and real-time alarm monitoring. It includes Pacific Controls powerful tools for managing preventive maintenance. Combining GPS and M2M means that these services are enhancing business process and customer experience throughout the transportation sector.
It supplies a wide range of data including: Real time position and status information for any number of vehicles
- Travel history including speed, event alerts and engine on or off times
- Real-time display of vehicle parameters
- Details of speed limit violations, including number of occasions, the actual speed on each occasion with date, time and place
- Ability to define geographic zones and create custom landmarks
- Real time vehicle parameter values
- Reports with date, start and end location, as well as driver information
- Vehicle activity analysis tools.
- Notification of critical alarms by email and SMS
- Alerts when drivers are not wearing seatbelts.
Using Pacific Controls feature-rich fleet management and tracking solution brings a wide range of benefits.
- It integrates logistics throughout the business; creating a single point of information and control for all operations.
- It automates fleet management and tracking operations and thus increases efficiency.
- It provides real time tracking using GPS devices and monitoring systems.
Pacific Controls offers a proven management information system (MIS) for day-to-day operations of road-transport logistics, including a platform for collaboration with customers. It supports all key processes and integrates moving vehicle control tools, effective remote vehicle data transfer, powerful logistic tools and also allows for the monitoring of alarms in real-time and as a single and unified offering. It reduces vehicle outages and service costs and increases transportation efficiency. The solution allows fleet managers to coordinate staff effectively, to analyse performance data and to draw conclusions from it to help improve future performance.
By using M2M communications in conjunction with satellite based GPS units and location-based services, companies can also benefit from real-time information.
Pacific Controls Fleet Management System is a hosted, web based solution in which GPS devices installed in vehicles will push the data over GPRS to Pacific Controls GCCC, where it is accessible to any authorised user. The team at the GCCC will maintain the application and its hosting infrastructure so there is no need for investment in servers and IT staff.
The software suite is a bundle of applications used to manage, track and schedule a fleet of vehicles in real time. The application is built using state-of-the-art technology to provide the same user experience on a web browser as would be provided by a standalone Windows application.
The vehicle tracking system shows the live location of each vehicle on a map alongside a list of all of the company’s the vehicles. When the mouse pointer is over the live location of a vehicle, the system provides additional information about that vehicle. Details are accessible only to authorised users and this authorisation is set by the administrator. Figure 8 shows the vehicle tracking screen
The software suite comprises the following main applications:
- Vehicle management system
- Driver management system
- Event logging system
- Violation monitoring system.
Vehicle Management System
The Vehicle Management system is the portal for maintaining the list of vehicles in the fleet. Manufacturers can connect onboard diagnostic systems wirelessly to Pacific Controls ICT Enabled Managed Services for Business Process Integration in order to gather data in real time about equipment use and any faults that may be developing. Pacific Controls can offer their customers a vehicle tracking service to protect against theft and contracts based on predictive maintenance to minimise downtime and fuel consumption. Safety equipment, such as rear-view cameras, can be monitored and any faults repaired before an accident occurs. The system stores complete details of the vehicle, including make and model, which can be used to generate aggregate reports for the fleet as a whole.
There is a pre-specified list of aggregate and specific reports, which the user can add to as required, allowing them to evaluate the performance of each vehicle and to generate reports on:
- Vehicle activity
- Vehicle speed over the period
- Vehicle distance travelled per day or per month
- Journey start and stop data
- Activity and status history.
These reports can be exported into a range of file formats including PDF and XLS and can be sent to the user’s email account on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Summary reports include:
- Location and duration of vehicle idling
- Brief summary of the route taken by the vehicle in a given time frame
- Maximum and average speed across trips
- Distance covered across all of the trips in a given time period
- List of events notified during the trip.
Driver Management System
The Driver Management system is the portal for maintaining the list of drivers employed in the fleet. It stores personal details for each driver, as well as their availability, as shown in Figure 9.
Event Logging System
The event logging system allows the manager to specify rules and is used for logging any kind of events triggered either by the sensors connected to the system or the data available from the GPS module itself. An example screen is shown in Figure 10.
Violation Monitoring System
The violation monitoring system has a pre-defined list of alerts (see below) that can be configured to be email, SMS or pop-up alerts, including:
- Vehicles crossing geo-fence boundaries that can be set in the system and shown on a map
- Vehicle exceeding a pre-defined speed limit
- Vehicle idle for longer than the specified number of minutes
- Other alerts can easily be specified by the user.
Benefits for Manufacturers of Heavy Machinery and Earth Moving Equipment
Owners of heavy machinery and earth moving equipment can collect real-time information about how their plant is used from the onboard management systems in the machines they have supplied across the globe. Manufacturers can offer their customers services for real-time monitoring and vehicle tracking, which can assist in retrieving stolen equipment and allow fleet managers to maximise efficiency and reduce GHG emissions.
They can offer predictive maintenance services based on detailed monitoring of condition and sophisticated data mining and analytics that enhance the standard preventative maintenance approach. This can identify potential problems in advance and arrange appropriate intervention. The services allow manufacturers to have an on-going relationship with equipment users and provide a central data depository for analysis that will enhance R&D.
Benefits for Owners of Heavy Machinery and Earth Moving Equipment
Owners of Heavy Machinery and Earth Moving Equipment can eliminate causes of inefficiency and maximise ROI through increased productivity, cost savings and enhanced revenue. Predictive maintenance will reduce the downtime of expensive equipment. Real-time monitoring and vehicle tracking will help to prevent thefts. Managers are able to monitor drivers work patterns and ensure their safety and can make well-timed decisions by having access to real-time information.