Future of Trucking & Logistics

August 2013

Vol. 01. No. 03

Merc’s FleetBoard Story How SA is Innovating

Upd

ate

Carts

Before Horses

How Safe Are Your Trailers?

Maxus

Enters LCV Ring Exploring The Brand’s Vision

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A Daimler Brand MBSA/126/HYP001

MBSA/101/HYP001

TRUCKS. LEASING & FINANCING. FLEET SOLUTIONS. SERVICE & PARTS.

BUY 20, RUN 1 FREE.

Save 5% on fuel when you invest in an Actros fleet.

Unlike other fuel consumption tests, Mercedes-Benz trucks chose the extreme everyday environment presented by the challenging Eastern Cape roads, with high traffic congestion and adverse weather conditions to test the fuel efficiency of the Actros 2644 LS/33 and Actros 2654 LS/33, equipped with Hypoid Axles.

As real drivers took the helm of the 6 x 4 truck tractors, with standard interlink trailers, 9920 kilometers, including the Penhoek Pass with an elevation of over 1884 metres, stood between them and the goal – to prove these Mercedes-Benz trucks are the most fuel efficient ever produced. It’s a goal that was not only achieved, but also quickly surpassed, as the trucks racked up an impressive 5% fuel saving, compared to the hub reduction axle models. Which means, the more Mercedes-Benz Actros models you add to your fleet, the more you’ll be able to run for free. For more information, contact Mercedes-Benz Commercial Vehicles on 0800 133 355 or visit www.mercedes-benz.co.za/trucks

Cover Story >>

Beyond the Sales Although Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s FleetBoard telematics system is not new, Leon Schnell went behind the scenes to uncover how South Africa is informing the system’s global development

T

he FleetBoard story in South Africa is one of local engineering pioneers taking the high-tech platform offered to them by holding company Daimler AG and pushing the envelope to offer operators a revolutionary new service.

One of those pioneers is undoubtedly Julian Weldon, FleetBoard South Africa’s Uptime Manager (more on that ‘Uptime’ choice later). If you are one of MercedesBenz South Africa’s current 300 FleetBoard clients – comprising approximately 2 500 trucks monitored by the system – you will be only too familiar with Julian.

This is because up to now he has personally scrutinised the FleetBoard technical reports of each and every Mercedes-Benz truck active on FleetBoard, and personally engaged with clients where his expertise has predicted a potentially impending mechanical or electronic fault, or identified opportunities for significant operational cost-saving.

Should you ask Julian how he has achieved this level of analysis on a monthly or even more frequent basis, and he shrugs and modestly says, “Up to now it’s been mostly manual and it takes time to retrieve the data.” Going forward, he reveals that Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) is increasingly automating the diagnostic functions, and heavy investment is also being put into the local FleetBoard team – almost doubling its size in the last few months.

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Julian Weldon and Rowlands Peters

To understand the importance of FleetBoard and its local Uptime component you have to wind the clock back to 2008, when MBSA sent its top five technicians to Germany to receive training on retro-fitting the FleetBoard system (originally developed in Germany) to Actros trucks. At that time FleetBoard wasn’t a standard fitment on new trucks as it is today, and Julian was one of those five.

In 2010 MBSA approached Julian to join their FleetBoard team locally, and in 2011 he did, leaving behind his position as a diagnostic technician in the Cape Town dealer network. “That is when we started the full Uptime offering,” recalls Julian. “Before that the team was doing it on an ad-hoc basis, and then we concentrated on growing the product and introducing it to the market.”

At its essence, FleetBoard is a system which monitors truck driver behaviour and a vehicle’s position, and offers a suite of reports from a global fleet overview, useful for board meetings; to a nitty-gritty analysis of individual drivers’ styles and tips for improvement, useful for driver trainers.

The Uptime component was developed in South Africa, utilising the technical vehicle data already being monitored by pre-installed vehicle sensors, to both detect current technical faults and predict imminent failures – all on a real-time basis.

Faults reported by the vehicle are transmitted via the GSM network, categorised into ‘0’, ‘1’ or ‘2’ codes (where ‘2’ is critical), analysed by technicians in a 24/7 Customer Service Centre in South Africa, and then action is taken: in the case of serious faults the technical manager responsible for the vehicle is notified immediately, and interventions done to avoid ‘downtime’.

This is where ‘Uptime’ comes in, instead of the industry standard reference of vehicle ‘downtime’. “A customer gets paid on uptime, he doesn’t get paid on downtime. We calculate uptime: it’s from a mindset where we look at the positive, not the negative,” explains Rowlands Peters, National Sales Manager for FleetBoard South Africa.

Impressive results The FleetBoard system was active in Europe for eight years before it was introduced into South Africa in 2008, and it has come a long way since being piloted by a Witbank coal-transporter with five trucks. Now regarded by numerous high-profile fleets in South Africa as an essential component of their operations, FleetBoard’s local conversion ratio is enviable: 58% of new Actros trucks sold in South Africa end up being activated on the system.

One of the key ingredients for this high success ratio is the approach MBSA has taken, by offering all new clients a four month free trial of the FleetBoard system.

Thanks to MBSA engaging with Daimler in Germany, FleetBoard has moved from being a retro-fitted system

to one for which new Actros trucks were pre-wired – but still requiring the control unit to be purchased – to being fully pre-fitted into all new Actros and now Axor trucks sold in South Africa.

Rowlands describes the first trial month of FleetBoard for new customers as a stealth phase, where operators are requested to not inform their truck drivers of FleetBoard’s monitoring presence in their vehicles. This provides valuable reference data on the ‘status quo’, where drivers’ standard behaviour can be benchmarked.

“You experience frequently that a customer will tell you, ‘My driver has been driving for 20 years with no accidents. You cannot teach him anything!’” reveals Rowlands. “However, the system doesn’t lie: it shows you what the driver is doing when you are not there.”

In the second and third trial months, the data gathered in the first month is analysed and presented to the customer, and the truck driver is taken along a physical route where their FleetBoard report – drivers are individually identified by FleetBoard through optional driver cards – is used to suggest improvements to their driving styles.

In the fourth month, the local FleetBoard team returns to the client for a final presentation, showing FleetBoard’s proof of how the fleet’s fuel consumption and driver performance has improved thanks to FleetBoard.

Mercedes-Benz uptime monitoring and remote fault detection process

FleetBoard Server

Break down call

Critical fault Codes 2 (!)

Active faults (0,1,2), stored faults, technical status of truck, maintenance prognosis, position

FleetBoard Telediagnose Viewer

Fault Codes 1 and 0 reporting 1 x a day, i.e. 7:45am

Support

Trucks with FleetBoard equipped

CRC Agent Set Format

Remedial actions / repair recommendations / assignment

Diagnosis Expert (Team) in MBSA/Pretoria • Analysis of Telediagnose data • Daily/weekly Reports about current • technical issues of the SA fleet • Decision about repair process • Definition of remedial actions • Repair support

Local MB Workshop Acts on remedial actions defined by Diagnosis Expert MBSA

August 2013 / Future Trucking & Logistics

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Cover Story >>

“On average we’ve saved our customers between 5% to 15%, purely on their fuel consumption. If you take a rough figure, that equates to R6 000 to R8 000 per month,” explains Rowlands. “We’ve proven it in big fleets where we’ve achieved an 8% fuel saving: if you take that over 20 vehicles over a year, you’re looking at almost R2 million in fuel savings.”

The Uptime component administered by Julian ties into this effort, and he estimates that thanks to preemptive maintenance FleetBoard is successfully saving local operators in the region of a combined R300 000 per month.

With a strong focus on each truck’s drive train and braking system, Uptime is only concerned with monitoring essential components which would result in vehicles breaking down. Brake wear is another significant operating expense, and FleetBoard has

The one and only Third-party fleet management systems are currently proliferating in South Africa, but both Julian and Rowlands are quick to point out that as an OEMdeveloped product FleetBoard is completely unique.

“FleetBoard is the complete package: it incorporates driver training, fault-reporting, driver performance analysis and a mapping system,” says Julian. “It’s the only system to my knowledge that incorporates everything into one package to bring maintenance and fuel costs down.”

Rowlands adds: “MBSA can offer a customer a one-stop shop treatment. We give a customer a full solution, and if there are any challenges with regards to any of our offerings, a customer can visit a Mercedes-Benz dealership and everything can be sorted out – rather than different suppliers.”

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Future Trucking & Logistics / August 2013

also been proven to reduce this. Non-essential components are not monitored.

“Generally on 85% brake wear we’ll instruct the customer to send the vehicle through to the workshops,” reveals Julian. “If you run your brakes to over 100% wear, you’re looking at replacement parts of both brake drums and discs. At a cost of R2 000 upwards, we want to negate that: we don’t want a customer to replace their brake discs before they absolutely have to.

Correct retarder usage is also suggested by the FleetBoard system as part of driver training, which also minimises the use of trucks’ brakes. “On average we have about 300 000 kilometres on a set of brake pads, which was unheard of before – we even have one customer who achieved over one million kilometres on a set!” adds Julian.

FleetBoard’s wealth of information and analysis has off-shoots which also benefit the customer. For example, large fleets are turning to it to incentivise drivers to obtain the lowest fuel consumption (a practise which encourages friendly competition amongst drivers to improve their skills based on FleetBoard’s advice); the system improves stock supply at dealerships as they are able to view what parts will likely need to be replaced on vehicles booked in for servicing (currently being rolled out); and it can even be used to detect and provide evidence of fuel theft (as it has been locally).

Confirmation of the value of the Uptime concept came earlier this year, when Julian was invited to Germany to give a presentation to Daimler’s technical heads: it has since been introduced in a pilot project in Europe on 5 000 Euro 5 trucks, and has the potential to be expanded to the full 40 000 trucks in the market.

Local opportunities for growth exist around the FleetBoard DispoPilot – an invaluable hardware tool which offers bar-code scanning to remove delays in invoicing for crossborder deliveries – and in the introduction of the FleetBoard system into light commercial fleets utilising Mercedes-Benz Sprinters.

“Going forward we want to ensure that we have FleetBoard standard on all commercial vehicles from Daimler,” says Rowlands. “That is our 2015 vision: we’ll have full recovery, full Uptime, and full monitoring of all the brands we sell to the local market.”

August 2013 / Future Trucking & Logistics

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