If your business is one that depends on transportation, you know that coordination is extremely important. With consumers’ reliance on a company’s distribution arm, today’s companies are turning old practices on their heads and utilizing a more technology-driven approach to effectively manage their company’s transportation initiatives. This technology is innovating quickly and could mean a major transformation for businesses before too long. Today, we’ll go through three innovations that are working to change how transportation-dependent companies do things.
Fleet Management
The first technology that we want to talk about is fleet management. Fleet management is actually a makeup of several different types of software that has been combined to create a comprehensive fleet management platform. The fleet management software includes an easy-to-use centralized dashboard. In this dashboard you can find all the information that needs to be known about your fleet, including:
- Work pending in priority order
- Any issues holding up progress
- Equipment status, permits, or other admin items
- Repair orders and repair status
- Employee information (Driver’s License, physical, and other administrative information)
- Approved and unapproved work orders
- Predictive maintenance schedules
- Predictive fleet schedules
- And more
Since fleet management software is designed to manage large numbers of vehicles, drivers, and combinations of the two, having one outfitting your distribution or transportation section of your business is a complete game changer. Not only can you tell who is driving what vehicle, you can see what it will ultimately cost to run the routes, providing actionable information in which to make decisions.
Internet of Things
An ever-growing part of modern-day technology, the Internet of Things, is beginning to revolutionize the way companies are able to track their assets. Since any manufacturing company relies on its procurement processes and its distribution, the IoT is a major benefit to manufacturers. With IoT-enabled asset tracking solutions integrated, you can remotely track your equipment, vehicles, and inventory on both ends to more effectively manage your assets.
IoT-enabled asset tracking provides the following features:
- Use real-time data to adjust your business to build efficiency
- Theft and loss prevention
- Comprehensive inventory management
- Negative impact reduction through predictive analysis
- On-point customer service
- And more
If your business has problems with route inefficiency, costs of doing business, or any other logistics-based aspect of your business, utilizing asset management software powered by the Internet of Things can be a good solution for your company.
Autonomous Vehicles
Finally, we get to the creme de la creme of transportation innovation: the driverless vehicle. It’s been years since the first driverless car was tested and today there are working trucks shipping products on southwest U.S. highways. While today’s driverless trucks aren’t advanced enough to make dock-to-dock runs, navigating the open road is no problem. Uber subsidiary Otto completed the first-ever autonomous delivery, delivering beer from Fort Collins, CO to Colorado Springs, CO. In the next few years it will be a viable alternative to hiring shipping companies; and, beyond may just make the truck driver an endangered species. Some of the main benefits of driverless trucks include:
- Fewer traffic accidents
- Reduction in-road congestion
- Cost reduction
- Lower product prices
Since there is a long way to go until autonomous vehicles dominate the shipping industry, finding out what solutions can work today to help you benefit your company is important. Call Machado Consulting today at (508) 453-4700 for more.
