All things to all en
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Until recently, if you wanted to track a vehicle, you bought a tracking system; if you wanted to work out routes, you bought a routeing and scheduling system; and if you wanted to analyse your fleet's operational costs or keep track of job scheduling, you bought a fleet management system. Traditionally, all have been sold as separate elements by relatively small, specialist IT concerns.
More recently, a trend has started towards integrated systems that are designed to provide all things to all men in a single package, and it's a market that DaimlerChrysler, like Volvo before it with its Dynafleet prod uct, has decided it has to be in.
DaimlerChrysler's new FleetBoard package, presented to CMin a recent trip to Stuttgart, combines all the functionality of traditional fleet management, tracking, diagnostics and routeing and scheduling systems using GPS and GSM technologies, but with one key difference: it's entirely Web-based.
Web site
What this means is that users don't have to buy expensive office-based hardware and software in order to access or analyse data. Instead, all the data gathered is transmitted auto matically to DaimlerChrysler. It then puts the data, and any management reports based on .t, on a web site for users to access via an Internet-ready PC anywhere in the world.
"Particularly in the transport industry, people are talking more than anything else about the Internet," says Theodor Maurer, director of telernatics and new services at DaimlerChrysler. The customer doesn't need to invest in special software and hardware and it doesn't matter where he is or when he wants access."
Apart from the convenience factor, this also means that once vehicles have been fitted with the neces= sary equipment, users face only service charges.
Between trials and initial sales in Germany (where FleetBoard has been on the market since January), some 1,500 vehicles have been fitted with the new system. It is now being rolled out across Europe; the UK will get it later this year.
"We see enormous potential for it," says Maurer. "In the next three years, a third of our sales will be of vehicles equipped with „ • telemat
ics systems and I expect it will be on 70-80% of vehicles in the next five to six years. In the long run, it will be standard." The new system isn't just for Mercedes-Benz vehicles, either. "Customers often have other trucks z$1 and hopefully we can --4.•
----___. convince them to
,7 equip the whole fleet,'
' says Maurer. Key to this i
°•...., "....,.. will be the development ...••.. -.4, ,
„""'-•'`of a common CAN bus
***-standard which Maurer believes will happen in the next year or two. Until then it will only be possible to gather a limited amount of the vehicle information from nonMercedes-Benz vehicles.
Repair costs
Main user benefits of the system will be the predicted reductions in fuel and repair costs and enhanced vehicle safety with reduced downtime.
A demonstration of the system's capabilities will be on the FleetBoard web site within a few weeks at wwwfleetboard.com. Full costs for the installation and usage of FleetBoard should be announced at the forthcoming IAA Motor Show in Frankfurt.