What is actionable equipment data?
The heavy-duty industry has been going through a technological revolution that affects both business operations and management. You can gain a competitive advantage over your industry by learning the importance and purpose of actionable equipment data using condition-based maintenance monitoring platforms. Let’s learn what this is.
Most equipment and heavy-duty vehicles are now integrated with computer systems that communicate with the outside world in some form or another. These computer systems combine location service technology, and equipment diagnostics, and usually use monitoring sensors to track and report equipment data through cellular networks to an external portal. This process helps improve performance and operation efficiency on your own fleet. Once this data is put into the web portal, it can then be accessed remotely and digitally for a number of machines.
Industry-standard data points for heavy-duty machinery include GPS, engine diagnostics, vehicle routing, fuel consumption, and maintenance/repair scheduling.
Now that we have a broad idea of what this actionable equipment data is – why should you even invest in something? Here are the top 4 reasons why we think you should look at external vendors for fleet management.
Simplifying your fleet management process
The first reason and probably the most obvious is how the use of actionable equipment data and new technologies can simplify basic pen-and-paper processes. Most fleet managers don’t love the idea of doing administrative tasks. Things like scheduling fleet maintenance and repair or quoting/invoicing can really take up a good chunk of your day – which results in lower productivity and keeps you from investing more effort into profit-making decisions.
Using pen-and-paper specifically can increase your workload and keep you from managing fleet issues that need to be prioritized. The more time you spend on asset allocation, maintenance schedules, and other administrative tasks, the more you are hurting your business. To combat this, we suggest using electronic systems such as equipment telematics that provide actionable equipment data for the automation and digitalization of your business processes. This can also reduce human and communication error risks.
Improved efficiency and productivity
With fleet management being a very intricate career path, there are many things to consider when going over its best practices. Looking into operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness is one thing, but helping your operators with equipment maintenance, safety, and compliance is another.
If you monitor and track these things for each of your vehicles, you will surely improve the productivity of your fleet in the long run. Even if this sounds like a huge task, there’s no need to worry. Equipment data technology is super easy and fun to use when tackling arising challenges.
Obstacles that fleet managers must face include accurately timing equipment maintenance due to the long-lasting equipment usage on job sites. Ensuring equipment uptime is crucial for productivity, cost implications, and operator safety which can really hurt your business. Actionable equipment data can help confront this problem by giving preventative and even proactive insights into vehicle location and engine condition that makes it easier to keep efficiencies high.
External vendors are worth the investment due to their access to asset utilization metrics such as engine hours and geofencing. You get a complete overview of your entire fleet and its health at the tip of your fingers. Using the common web portals of these services, telematics with actionable data can streamline operations and ensure all tasks are managed effectively in real time.
Safety of your operators
Tracking unsafe driving habits can improve your fleet safety – something that can actually be tracked through equipment data. Monitoring platforms are capable of tracking equipment speed and hard accelerations and breaks! You can greatly reduce operator accidents as well as avoid vehicle damage by tracking these habits. In practice, helping your operators’ safety is crucial to both your business and its profitability.
Another way that equipment data increases the safety of your operators is through tracking maintenance. Monitoring the health of your fleet’s engines through data points such as oil and air filter life can assist in actualizing issues that can lead to life-threatening accidents.
Finally, a niche answer to collision threats is the use of video technology, which plays an important role in the safety of drivers on- and off-road. With thousands of fatal crashes involving large trucks and other heavy equipment per year, it is important to track this data and provide assistance to your operators to help reduce these threats.
Getting immediate notifications of incidents as well as remote access to equipment videos can assist in the claims process. Along with this, vehicle tracking and observing allow for speed/behavior metrics to better train operators and reduce crashes.
Huge potential savings for your business
The last reason you should start using this actionable equipment data might be the most important to you as a fleet owner – creating huge potential savings for your business.
We all know about the cost of oil in recent years, and with fuel becoming more steadily expensive, understanding the consumption of your vehicles can be a valuable way to streamline your fleet. Minimize your costs and boost performance by increasing fuel efficiency for your equipment.
For many companies, fuel remains one of if not the largest expenses for fleets, accounting for 60% of total fleet operating costs. As oil prices rise, the pressure to control costs also rises. Connecting to actionable equipment data services can help managers see where their money is going and eliminate careless actions.
Another way to save is by preventing stolen vehicles. Many heavy-duty vehicles are valued for their parts or cargo depending on the industry – but can be easily prevented through telematics apps and computerized safety sensors. With location services such as GPS, you can give your equipment a better chance by protecting them before they get scoped out!
One of the approaches that these actionable equipment data services use to prevent theft is geofencing, which is like an invisible fence that triggers a response when your assets cross it. With virtual boundaries covering geographic locations such as worksites or warehouses, you can get notified whenever your vehicles leave your designated areas.
Conclusion
Once again, using actionable equipment data is vital for top fleets and businesses and is an ever-improving practice for fleet owners and managers. Accidents and fuel can be expensive but is as easy as ever to streamline and improve productivity and operating efficiencies.
Finalize your return-on-investment comparisons and get to simplifying your fleet management processes as soon as possible. The faster you start using actionable equipment data, the faster you will gain a competitive advantage over your industry!
When it comes to gaining actionable insight into equipment, you may want to look at the Senzit sensor which can help with monitoring your equipment digitally – saving you time and money while reducing downtime.
Check out the Senzit predictive maintenance platform and its wide variety of features.