Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/217452
maintenance | by Tom Jackson TJackson@randallreilly.com DEALING WITH THE DIGITAL DELUGE Heavy equipment fleet managers want better training, easier access to their data and help justifying ROI T elematics technology is found on almost every truck in every big trucking fleet in the country today. Trucking companies can't compete without it. But, to the consternation of many in the industry, adoption rates for off-road heavy equipment remain low. This year the Association of Equipment Management Professionals surveyed its members to measure their use of and gauge their opinions about telematics technology for off-road fleets. The AEMP is a group of about 1,000 heavy-equipment fleet managers that offers a variety of educational, training and certification opportunities for equipment management professionals. The 2013 AEMP Telematics Survey asked members if and how they used telematics and how that experience might be changed to facilitate greater adoption. In a nutshell, the survey showed that a majority of respondents use the technology, but most of them only use it on 1 to 10 percent of their machines (Charts 1 and 2). Cost, the complexity of accessing the information and a lack of demonstrated ROI are given as the primary reasons fleet managers don't use telematics more extensively (Chart 3). Culture matters A deep dive into the attitudes of fleet managers towards telematics showed some strong, but not surprising, opinions about the technology. One key finding is that company culture is important. It can serve as a barrier to implementation, but also the right corporate culture can also drive deployment. "Culture is the way a company traditionally does business," says Stan Orr, president of AEMP. "How a company reacts to new information is usually determined by its culture." If a company is entrepreneurial and has a culture of openness and risk taking, if it challenges employees to seek new and better ways to do things, it's more likely to welcome new technologies. Interestingly, respondents who identify themselves as "old school" downplayed the impact of culture, while many others felt like the infusion of millennials (people who reached adulthood around the year 2000) into fleets will increase overall comfort with telematics. Frustration with OEMs Perhaps the most telling item in the survey was the attitude respondents had toward OEMs and third party providers. According to the survey conclusions: "OEMs are the taproot of telematics capabilities for most fleets ... however they are also the primary source of frustration – for their inconsistent and often challenging approaches to telematics success." "All the data these guys need comes from the manufacturers; they're the main root of the tree," says Orr. "What makes this difficult for the end user is that each manufacturer does it in a different way." For example, OEM No. 1 might define idle time as the vehicle in neutral with the engine idling at EquipmentWorld.com | December 2013 37