Fleet Management through advanced and flexible IoT Devices
A GPS tracker is like a black box for your fleet. It is a small piece of hardware that monitors each of the vehicles in your fleet for its location. Most of the GPS Fleet Tracking Devices connect to your vehicle via the OBD-II connection. The device has GPS received, Cellular connection equipment, storage, and processing modules.
It is hard to believe that such a small piece of equipment can prove beneficial to improve productivity, enforce driver and cargo safety, help reduce fuel costs, and control maintenance costs. We make an endeavor to highlight the numerous benefits of GPS fleet tracking devices. The priority is to locate the black holes across operations of your fleet and bring them into visibility ambit. Visibility levels are different for logistics providers. Road cartage has to remain sensitive to short term as well as long term expectations of their customers. That is the reason why they need to be agile in their approach. IoT enabled technologies can definitely bring in a lot of visibility and traceability to the industry. Connectivity and data feeds can take road transportation to the next level and lead to a financial impact.
Use of Internet of Things (IoT) in fleet management
A fleet involves trucks, vans, and other vehicles that typically move goods from one place to another. It can be looked upon as ‘things’ interacting with ‘things’ than mere human interactions. As so many things are interacting with each other, there arises the need to record and trace these interactions in order to ensure regularity. Monitoring helps to identify any abnormal circumstances. This is where IoT forms a critical element of fleet management. IoT devices use sensors, recorders, transmitters, etc, to carry out their monitoring and real-time reporting. These are fitted on to forklift trucks and transport vehicles.
Monitor driver behavior
Drivers are critical to the movement of goods across continents. Driver behavior while driving the vehicles to ensure the safety of the cargo and the drivers themselves. The devices also help reduce the cost of getting work done by drivers as they closely monitor the speed and any halts in service.
When GPS enabled devices track the behavior of your fleet drivers, you get the following benefits:
- Detection of abuse of company assets
- Compliance with regulatory requirements like HOS, etc.
- Continuous monitoring of speed violations. Hence ensuring safe driving with no fines
- Route mapping and geofencing capabilities
Location Tracking
Keeping track of each of the vans and trucks in your fleet helps in monitoring your shipments. You exactly know where the goods are and when the shipments are expected to reach their destination. This helps in planning for future loads and vehicle movements. You also stand to get traffic information, which helps schedule the perfect time to move vehicles into crowded areas. You can also get reports and real-time updates on accidents, rollovers, or overspeeding. Any sudden braking can also be reported in real-time to all stakeholders by the smart IoT GPS tracking devices.
Custom geofencing location boundary breaches can also be reported in real-time. You can monitor the time spent by drivers on each of their trips. You can track your fleet to optimize workflow, reduce layover times, and prevent irregularities in time reporting.
Monitoring fleet speed
As the GPS fleet tracking Devices keep track of vehicle speeds, they can sed out alert notifications o stakeholders. This way, the fleet managers and dispatchers can be more prepared to handle changing situations. Speed reports generated by the IoT devices can be used to discipline drivers, assign speeding fines to the offending drivers to ensure discipline.
Monitoring unexpected events
The accelerometers fitted on to the GPS trackers can detect sudden braking or rollovers. These events are critical to maintaining the good quality of the cargo. The accelerometers provide harsh event monitoring and real-time reporting. It is observed when drivers do not reduce speed to the desired level while cornering, the shipment can be affected. Sudden acceleration, braking, and cornering alerts can be customized on the IoT device.
Real-time feedback can flow to drivers through alerts to their smartphone or tablet. Real-time notifications can be customized and sent via email, SMS, or app push notifications. This helps in quickly notifying the key personnel about incidents.
Engine Hours and Idling
When the fleet vehicles are idling or running for no reason, they lead to fuel wastage. Hence when an intelligent GPS monitoring device is equipped on the vehicle, it can provide fuel wastage reports.
Unique Visibility and Traceability advantage – When all the vehicles plying in your fleet are interconnected, it is easier to locate the movement of the vehicles and get projected arrival and departure times. This greatly helps with scheduling for shipments. And in case you come across issues, you only need to pull out the logs and get to the most critical point. The traceability feature is available at the click of a button. This helps in enriching the customer experience.
Preventative Maintenance
Preventative maintenance is an integral part of the cost-saving efforts of the company. When the fleet vehicles remain in good, there are least situations of breakdown. Preventive maintenance includes scheduled services, inspections, and repairs on all fleet vehicles and related equipment. The side effects of not having proper preventive maintenance cause delays, costs, downtime, and customer service disappointments. It can also help in achieving safety and compliance of fleet vehicles. These include tire inspections, registration reminders, and driver and equipment certifications. When you implement IoT devices, they can automate most of the activities to a certain level.
GPS tracking devices for fleet vehicles help with Preventative maintenance and their advantages are as follows:
- Direct reduction in costs involves in operation, maintenance, and repair of vehicles. Smart devices send out alert notifications to provide routine maintenance to your fleet. This leads to the prevention of vehicle break-downs and damages.
- When proper maintenance is carried out in a disciplined manner, it leads to fuel savings and efficiency. As it improves your fleet’s fuel economy, it also dramatically improves reliability leading to timely deliveries and turnaround. This has a direct effect on the achievement of customer delight.
- Well maintained vehicles cause less pollution and remain compliant with regulatory requirements
- Planned maintenance reduces the chances of unplanned equipment downtimes. Thereby keeping maintenance costs at the minimum. As your vehicles do breakdown less often, they lead to savings on towing and pickup services.
- Properly maintained vehicles have reduced wear and tear, hence they experience increase in longevity of the vehicles.
Eelinkteck GPS tracker fleet management solutions
Shenzhen Eelink Communication Technology Co Ltd enables successful fleet management with their IoT enabled monitoring devices. The GPS beacons are one such example of an extremely suitable fleet monitoring products. These products make an endeavor to cover all the aspects of your fleet. They also make it a point to report any fluctuations and unforeseen circumstances that pose a risk to your cargo’s quality. The beacons are one of the best GPS IoT devices for fleet managers who need an all-round report of their vehicles. The software is fully compatible with iOS and Android OS that powers most smartphones and tablets around the world. The devices manufactured by Eelinktech give expensive GPS sensors a run for their money.
Most prominent features of Eelinktech Fleet Management solutions
- Multiple connections capabilities – The equipment can work with several connection technologies like LTE/LTE-M/NB-IOT/satellite/Wi-Fi/BLE devices.
- High precision GPS and GLONASS – These high accuracy positioning systems use a 72 channel high sensitivity receiver for pinpoint positioning.
- Full track of historical movements – Tracking items with the added capability to know the variables like temperature and humidity went out of bounds for specified ranges. If there is a dispute with any stakeholder, the variances records can easily be pulled out of the system.
- A multitude of support capabilities of system and equipment – Devices and equipment provide support like tracking of location, temperature, humidity, motion detection, and ambient light intensity.
- Fall or impact detection alerts – Alerts are sent whenever g-forces exceed the set ranges