Your next Fleet Hack could be hiding in something you have been doing the identical way for years.
An excellent Fleet Hack doesn’t must reinvent an operation. Sometimes, it starts with questioning a process that is been done the identical way for years.
For this edition of Fleet Hacks, three fleet professionals share approaches they’ve put into practice: understanding the job before replacing the vehicle, turning repetitive emails into reusable templates, and using AI to envision fleet data.
Audit the Job, Not the Vehicle
When Siemens began electrifying its fleet, Adam Orth and the fleet team didn’t start by simply asking which electric vehicle could replace an existing vehicle.
They took a more in-depth have a look at the work those vehicles needed to support.
“Some of the priceless exercises we have done at Siemens wasn’t choosing electric vehicles,” Orth said. “It was asking an easy query: What does the job actually require?”
The exercise took the fleet team into the sector. They visited multiple sites, lined up vehicles, weighed them fully loaded and removed items from installed racks to find out what technicians actually needed.
In addition they interviewed drivers about their days and weeks, the client sites they visited and what worked — or didn’t — in the sector.
“After we began electrifying our fleet, we frolicked in the sector studying what technicians were carrying, how far they were driving, and what tools they really used daily,” Orth said.
That process challenged some assumptions about what the fleet needed.
“Many vehicles were carrying equipment that was rarely used, some routes required far less range than people assumed, and plenty of of our long-standing fleet specifications reflected how work was done years ago, not the way it happens today,” he said.
The experience led to a simple Fleet Hack: Before replacing a vehicle, audit the work.
“Spend a day together with your drivers. Empty a van. Weigh what’s inside. Ask what they use daily versus annually,” Orth said.
For the Siemens team, the hands-on exercise also provided a deeper understanding of what employees were actually doing in the sector, making a foundation for decisions that followed.
As Orth put it: “The fastest option to get monetary savings and reduce headaches is commonly not finding a greater vehicle. It’s higher understanding the job.”
Save the Emails You Send Again and Again
For Meghan Murray, considered one of her favorite Fleet Hacks addresses a much smaller a part of the workday: email.
Murray has 19 saved email signatures that she uses as templates for messages she sends recurrently. As a substitute of recreating a recurring message, she will be able to insert the suitable signature, fill in the data that changes and send it.
“I even have several email signatures saved that allow me to quickly insert pre-written messages, add only the minimal information needed, and send them straight away,” Murray said.
She especially relies on the templates when requesting information from managers about latest hires or communicating with drivers who’re leaving the corporate.
Those processes often require the identical information every time. A saved template allows Murray to supply the identical checklist without having to rewrite or seek for a previous email.
The profit is not only the time saved.
“Most significantly, the message never changes,” Murray said. “It is often clear, which greatly reduces the danger of miscommunication.”
After using the system for greater than 10 years, Murray has also seen those consistent messages create habits among the many people receiving them.
Some managers now joke that they’ve “beaten me to the punch” by providing new-hire information before Murray has a likelihood to request it.
“To me, that is an indication this hack has helped create positive habits and expectations,” she said.
The thought will be applied to any recurring fleet communication. Think in regards to the messages you send repeatedly: new-hire vehicle assignments, driver departures, mileage reporting, maintenance reminders or requests for documentation.
“Should you’re wondering find out how to start, it is easy,” Murray said. “Think in regards to the emails you send recurrently and create email signatures or templates for those messages.”
One template may save only a couple of minutes. Across 19 templates and years of use, those small savings can add up.
Ask: Can AI Help with This?
For Brent Baron, incorporating AI into his every day work began with a lesson from his son.
“I even have a 26-year-old son that schooled me on the advantages of AI,” Baron said. “It’s now a part of my every day work process.”
Now, before starting a project or task, Baron asks himself whether AI could help.
One recent example involved checking VIN information for 70 vehicles listed on a certificate of insurance against information stored within the fleet’s database.
As a substitute of comparing each record manually, Baron put the database information into an Excel spreadsheet and provided the spreadsheet and PDF to an AI tool with instructions to match the VIN information.
The comparison found discrepancies.
“Of the 70 vehicles, we found one vehicle in our database had incorrect 12 months, make and model and one other had an incorrect 12 months,” Baron said.
That discovery prompted a bigger experiment.
Baron provided a spreadsheet containing the 12 months, make, model and VIN for the fleet’s roughly 1,000 vehicles and asked AI to envision the VINs against the vehicle descriptions.
It found one other three errors.
“This took all of about five minutes,” Baron said.
The VIN check is simply a method Baron has incorporated AI into his workflow. He also uses it to envision emails and letters and identified potential applications similar to comparing vehicle trim levels, writing collection letters, preparing RFP responses and researching state registration costs.
His hack ultimately comes right down to adding one query before starting a task: Can I utilize AI?
For data-heavy applications, human review stays a crucial final step. AI might help discover records that warrant attention, but fleet managers should confirm discrepancies before making changes and follow their organizations’ policies for handling company or driver data.
Query the Routine
These three Fleet Hacks address very different pieces of fleet management, but each began by questioning an on a regular basis process.
Does the substitute vehicle actually need every little thing the previous vehicle carried? Does the identical email have to be written for the twentieth time? Does every line of a spreadsheet have to be compared manually?
Sometimes the reply could also be yes. Other times, a small change can eliminate unnecessary work.
Audit the job. Save the message. Ask whether technology can handle the primary pass.
This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
