Category Archives: AVL

Let’s imagine a scenario; a four-way stop sign and your driver happens to be crossing through it. All you know is that during the intersection there was an accident, one vehicle hit another. The questions immediately arise, who made the mistake? Who didn’t stop? And who is responsible for the damages?

These are common issues that arise with any transportation organization, be it a delivery fleet, public service fleet, or private fleet. Knowing exactly the metrics of every vehicle under your control is very important. Often when high-value assets are at risk the likely hood of ‘he said, she said’ arguments increase dramatically, as does the likely hood of one or more of the parties involved skewing the recounts of the actual events.

Our clients have reported back to us on multiple occasions that the data collected by the telematics devices equipped on their vehicles, has been sufficient evidence for the police to work with in order to settle claims. As telematics becomes more mainstream and known by other sectors and industries such as Police departments and Insurance companies, increasingly it becomes a legitimate defense to legal claims.

This aspect of telematics is equally beneficial to employers and employees who are both granted an extra layer of protection when dealing with high valued assets like vehicles or trailers. This beneficial characteristic of telematics extends beyond accident reconstruction. With features like GeoFences and Points of Interest, claims about work completion on sites can much more easily be disputed. As well as the accuracy of time on deliverance jobs and work projects.

Once again, we urge you to check out our services and products on our website. Furthermore, we invite you to let us walk you through a LiGO® demo in which we take you through an introductory walkthrough of our software, as well as the key areas of growth it promotes.

There are many types of telematics Hardware devices, cables, tablets, and sensors that exist in the market that all serve different purposes. Often certain vehicles require completely different specs to perform their duty. For example, a snowplow is going to require a much sturdier and durable device which has the ability to identify when a snowplows arm and plow is in the down position or not, whereas a delivery vehicle would most likely not.

There are two main categories of questions to determine when making the decision on which devices to equip.

• Equipment/ Vehicle Information

  • The model/make of the vehicle (a Prius and a Ford are inherently different so might require different devices).
  • The year of manufacture is also important (cars older than 1996 require different hardware)
  • Is the device going to need to be inside or outside of the cab?
  • Is power needed or not

• Functional Information

  • What is the goal? Do we just need to track or is more functionality needed?
  • How many inputs are needed (e.g., right broom)?
  • Will you be needing engine diagnostics?
  • Do you need to identify the driver using the vehicle?
  • Staff to install or not?

These questions help narrow down the needs of your fleet and can identify the types of devices to be used. Below is a list of the different types of devices which each serve different purposes.

Hardware varies in the complexity of installation, some are a simple plug and play while others may require more technical knowledge of how to properly integrate the devices with the respective vehicles.

For more information on the different devices and capabilities please feel free to request a demo in which we can go in depth about all the different hardware, you may also want to check out our recorded Webinar in which we also explore these devices and more.

Some Important Notes about Automatic Route Optimization

The automatic optimization of Routes requires solving a notorious and complex problem in computer science called “The Travelling Salesman Problem”. Truly solving the problem and obtaining the guaranteed best route for a set of points on a map is an extremely time and resource consuming problem. It is even more complex on road networks where the distance between two points might be different depending on which direction you drive between them due to one way road systems.

For this reason, the automatic optimization feature uses an approach which performs an estimate and gets a result that is not necessarily the very best solution but should be a good one and should help give your fleet significant fuel savings over time when used for a workers daily set of jobs. If your route is optimized automatically by LiGO it will let you know how much time you saved when it is finished.

Below is an example of an optimized route in Boise – that reduced total drive time by 50% for interoffice mail delivery at the City, and an example of an auto generated route geofence that you can use for other reports.  This route optimization that had such an impact on Boise mail delivery took 5 seconds, and no GIS data processing.

Our take on route optimization is that there are two basic types

• GIS-based analytical optimization, similar to hydraulic modelling for water systems, that is complex, is done infrequently, and only as good as the underlying data.
• Day-to-Day optimization that creates “pretty good” routes, perhaps originally created from complex routing (number 1 above) and/or human experience, but is setup for easy to manage day-to-day operations.

LiGO uses data from 1) above if you have it, but is designed to support 2) above.  Please call to discuss if you have any questions – or need more information.

Using OSM (openstreetmap.org) data, LiGO® is able to generate useful results for optimizing travel through a set of points. At no extra cost, the route management functionality allows you to see the estimated distance and journey time of your planned routes and lets you automatically optimize with the “Optimize” feature or you can configure them manually with your local area knowledge. Within LiGO® you can import a pre-existing route from GIS or similar geospatial systems, you can create the route manually, or you can drive a route and auto create the route.  Routes can then be edited, deleted, and reassigned to workers.

How you can use this information

Reports can be created for total time in a route GeoFence, time stopped, time with “plow down”, or other onboard engine event within a route geofence. Other metrics such as time to job and time on job are auto calculated and turn by turn directions are provided via our free LiGO® Mobile app. Theses logistics will help you always be the most efficient manager possible, cutting time and costs at wherever necessary. This also opens avenues to improve customer relationships with more accurate info on the location and status of your crews in the field. 

Viewing Route Details

After configuring Route Optimization, your new and existing routes will now contain an extra field called Route Details. Here you can see the current length and estimated journey time of the route with the stops in the order that they currently stand. The map also contains a track drawn with directional arrows showing you the optimal route to take between each stop.

Optimizing Your Route

If you drag the stops around in the Route window to reorder them, the track on the map and the Route Details field will update in real time to show the newly calculated route. This is ideal when you have local knowledge of the area and want to use this specialist knowledge to tune your routes.

If you would like LiGO® to optimize your route automatically, you can click the “Optimize” button in the lower left hand side of the Route

In most cases, a mixture of the two approaches will yield the best results. Try an automatic optimization of the route to get off to a good start and then experiment with switching some stops around in areas that you know have complex road structures.

Often, the concept of going green is associated with more expensive and less productive ways of doing things. As it turns out, this is not always the case. Our LiGO telematics solution paves the way for you to transform your fleet operations into greener, more efficient ones. The combination of lower vehicle maintenance costs, improved fuel efficiency and overall improved productivity allow this to happen.

What do we mean by ‘Going Green’?

Simply put, going green means reducing the direct impact of our carbon footprint on the earth wherever possible. many of the functions that fleets perform have a direct or indirect impact on our environment. This could be the use of paper for reporting and logging functions, or the CO2 emissions released by most vehicles on the road. Eliminating waste where reasonably possible not only helps our earth and its inhabitants, it also improves operation productivity and reduces overhead costs.

How will ‘Going Green’ help you save on costs

Implementation of our LiGO telematics solution means that all vehicle logistics are available to you at all times. being alerted about long idle times, unnecessary trips, and harsh braking and accelerating enable you to do something about these issues. Stopping your fleet vehicles from using more fuel than needed will help reduce fuel costs, while the harsh driving alerts allow you to make whatever changes necessary to prevent the degradation of the vehicles, ultimately reducing maintenance costs. Additionally, being aware of harsh drivers among your crew will keep your employees and others using the roads much safer.

How will ‘Going Green’ help you save on time

One advantage of LiGO telematics is the ability to reduce paper waste by switching to digital. Switching to digital not only reduces amount of paper wasted but has also been shown to provide better data with less mistakes and inaccuracies. Reports can more easily be automated, checked of any mistakes, and shared by just a click of a button. Furthermore, the move to digital paper work is a trend now long in the making. The inevitability of digitized work places in most industries is commonly accepted as exactly that, inevitable.

To recap here are some of the main ways ‘Going Green’ can help you save

• Significant savings of fuel
• Low maintenance cost
• Streamlined operations reduced paper work
• Reduction in operation costs
• Lower insurance cost
• Increased life expectancy of vehicles and equipment

One of the biggest risks to fleet manager’s operations are negligent entrustment lawsuit’s. Negligent entrustment can be defined as when one party (the entrustor, typically in the position of manager) is held liable for negligence because they negligently provided another party (the entrusted) with a dangerous instrumentality, that caused injury to a third party. These situations are common and can lead to serious penalties.

There are many steps that can be taken towards preventing such circumstances. Preventative actions as simple as doing back ground checks on who you are hiring are a good start. Are you really surprised that the worker who totaled your transportation van had a long track record of on-road accidents, and a DUI on his record?

The truth is, sometimes no matter how thoroughly you do your research or take precautions to avoid these counter-productive situations accidents do and will happen. Here at MarshallGIS we have received feedback from fleet managers and other types of department heads who have been completely blind-sided by their most ‘trusted’ employees using fleets for personal gains or illegal activities putting the operations in danger. Telematics enable managers to pin point the cause of the problem whether the problem originated internally as in the example given above, or externally.

At MarshallGIS we offer all the tools required allow managers to the best of their ability to avoid any counter-productive activity. Through LiGO® and the software it features you, in whatever managing/planning position you occupy can be notified in real time of any activity that diverges from that of the norm. LiGO® telematics can act as an efficient counter-measure for operational safety for your crew.

Integration makes our product easy to implement while maximizing returns. One of the many functions of LiGO® ACCESS is its API functionality; our customers can keep the existing business systems with which staff are comfortable and familiar with, reducing training efforts and accelerating implementation. This means that the entirety of the telematics data collected by our software solutions can be interpreted, and then fed to a number of secondary systems for other purposes.

What are API’s how do they help?

API’s short for Application Programming Interface, is a characteristic of any software which allows it to connect different devices, and applications by allowing the transfer of data. It is what allows us to book a reservation at a hotel with just a few clicks on a device. It is the link between a command and results in times when the system in which you create the command, and the system in which the results derive from are separate. One analogy would compare an API to the pizza hut employee who takes your call places the order, and then sends the delivery driver in your direction. API’s effectively make communication between different applications possible whilst also enabling the use of the same data for different functions. The beauty of API’s is that the work they do is all behind the scenes, similar to code on a webpage; even though you can’t see it the code is constantly working to do whatever the input demands of it.

Integration features

LiGO® ACCESS web services, was first developed to enhance GeoKNX – a mature MarshallGIS product that pulls and pushes work orders and service requests to and from Lucity, Infor/Hansen and IBM/Maximo’s Enterprise Asset Management, and Work Management Systems (EAM/WMS) for over 100 customers and hundreds of thousands of service requests.  We now have this functionality for LiGO®, and have added Cityworks and Esri integration.

All modules are integrated together, but can be turned off or on based on permissions (uncheck modules if you don’t want them). MarshallGIS has extensive experience with integrating Mobile Work Order Management and Service Requests with location based systems such as ArcGIS including creates, updates and deletes.

Supported Modules

Esri GIS Integration

LiGO® provides for multiple interface options with Esri ArcGIS.  ArcGIS Server maps in LiGO®, live LiGO® vehicle feeds to your ArcGIS operations map, KML import/export, and CSV exports.

Cityworks Integration

MarshallGIS has been partnered with Cityworks for over 5 years and is committed to support Cityworks integration. API’s are designed to fluidly transition without breaks during a software version change.

No third party tools are needed to maintain integration.

We’ve also developed a work flows to push odometer readings from LiGO® into Cityworks and create a vehicle work order for activities such as vehicle inspections, oil changes and tire rotations base on miles and or time.

Garmin Integration

LiGO® can be optionally provisioned with Garmin’s for dispatch/jobs, routing and chat features, and even real time (based on traffic) estimated time of arrival.  This can be enabled simply by checking Garmin as an option. Garmin integration brings a lot of additional functionality – including turn by turn directions, proximity sensors, additional driver ID with NFC, camera, video, and chat.

Displays

To display live vehicles/crew locations from LiGO® on your Cityworks Operation map or any ArcGIS map (Desktop, Server, Online) there are two methods.  As always each have pros and cons.

1. LiGO® can use, but does not require, ArcGIS GeoEvent Processor to update a vehicle feature class on a user defined schedule. This method requires the user to have a Esri GEP license.
2. LiGO® can also send position updates to a user defined REST endpoint. The REST endpoint may be hosted at your location. If you prefer to simply publish a feature service with editing rights to the underlying vehicle feature class, LiGO® can host the REST endpoint and perform the transformation from the LiGO® output to JSON.

With LiGO® ACCESS API, Users can also populate data within Cityworks such as Work Orders or Service requests.

Telematics solutions offer more than just locations on a map. Yes, tracking is a fundamental aspect of the  service that telematics provides, but the full story offers more avenues to improving operational efficiency. A common misconception about telematics solutions is that they only offer advantages to individuals in managing positions. This is entirely false; the benefits of implementing a solution to your fleet provide operational benefits to managers, and employees alike.

More than giving you locations on a map, telematics software has advanced to the point of being able to tell you every minute discrepancy of your high value asset or vehicle on the field. Aside from functions like Real-time tracking, and Geo-fencing which add useful metrics when looking at your “dots on a map”, functions like Reports, Historical views, Route optimization, Graph support, Alerts and notifications and many others, add significance in ways more valuable to running smooth operations. The list of features available with our telematics solution goes on forever, and mentioning and evaluating each one would take more time than I have. For more information on these however, feel free to reach us and set up a request for a demo.

Although it’s usually quite apparent as to the benefits these systems bring to individuals in managing positions in the fleet and public sector industries, the lesser known benefits that come to field workers and crews are equally manifested. In many of our case studies we have found that employee satisfaction with solutions employed is apparent after just a few months of implementation. In the office, streamlining the process of getting paper-work to become work orders or activities means crews receive only necessary information. Work orders and tasks that integrate with GIS features allow for better time management and delegation of tasks by presenting visual aides that also contribute useful information about routing, and other time management tools. The elimination of paper in the field makes for less chaotic organization and ease of mobility while performing field jobs. The digitization of everything also reduces the number of data entry errors. Crews and individual employees also have an added layer of protection and security against false claims that might be in relation to a work or service being performed or any type of accident that occurs while in the field. Having the type of data that telematics solutions like our own LiGO® telematics provide, really does add benefits to employees.

I hate to cast an ugly shadow on employees, but knowing and controlling what happens when you, the manager, are not present can be taxing. The Geo-Fencing, and Point of Interest features of LiGO offer fleet managers and planners much needed control in oversight of operations. The two differ slightly in the way they are employed and in the way their analytical data can be read, interpreted, and implemented.

Through Geo-Fencing you may manually select areas in the shape of polygons over locations on a map, or even create Geo-fenced routes. You also have the option of importing these Geo-Fence areas from GIS systems directly enabling you to create more specialized maps. Another option would be to create routes as jobs occur; this can be done by collecting data from an optimal day’s work and saving it as the standard. Alerts, or notifications can be set up to be sent to managers to alert them to a number of different things. It can be set so that an alert is sent when a vehicle or worker has entered a Geo-Fence area, or when a vehicle or worker has left the area. the alerts can also be set to send if the vehicle/worker has spent over a certain amount of time, or under a certain amount of time in the selected Geo-Fence area. This means managers can ease up on stressing about when and where their workers are and focus on more pressing tasks.

Points of Interest (POI) are point based locations that you identify, and wish to track the amount of time spent at those locations.  POI’s could be building locations or fixed assets such as signs or hydrants.  POI’s can also be imported or manually defined, and will enable managers to quickly see when workers are on site or in transit, communicate accurate arrival information to customers, and generate productivity reports. Below is how the reporting might appear on a device.

Users may set the software to track certain events such as:

• “disconnecting” (Device tampering or “Disconnecting unit”)
• geo-fence violations (vehicles out-of-service-area)
• unauthorized use (“After business hours”)
• excessive speed
• excessive idling
• hard acceleration
• braking and collision
• specified mileage or hour alerts

We have addressed in previous blogs, some of the potential benefits regarding things like on road-safety, and the streamlining and modernization of a rather archaic way of keeping records the ELD mandate would bring to primarily trucking industries. It would not be fair however to point out some of the short-comings of the whole idea and how it’s being implemented.

Self-Certification

There are many companies that have registered their ELD solution as being compliant and are currently on the official FMCSA list of compliant providers. However, the FMCSA has currently no way of testing these supposed compliant solutions, and neither is there any third party organization performing any sort of testing. A certified solution on that list could be legitimate, but could also be far from it. This creates a large grey area especially for customers trying to be compliant but having no sure-fire way of knowing whether the solution they pick has actually been tested or actually complies to all the regulation rules, and laws.

Although there have been procedures set in place to identify and remove registered solutions that are not compliant the whole process just adds to the frustration of company and independent truckers, and fleets who would much rather not have to deal with what can only be described as unnecessary set-backs.

Varying Degrees of Compliance

This comes mostly as a compounding effect of the self certification issue in that, there are currently a large number of devices out in the market that all collect analyse and process data differently. This again makes decision processes all the more challenging for managers looking for a solution. Manufacturers and programmers are also left in the dark about specifications and requirements of devices and software.

Resistance by mainly smaller trucking businesses and self-hired truck drivers.

Some of the most notable push back for the ELD mandate has come from Individual truckers and small trucking fleet operators in what has become recognized as the #ELDorMe protests. Through October 6^th to the 8^th truckers gathered on the streets of Fresno California to protest the threat that the ELD mandate brings to their livelihood. A Facebook page under the name of “Operation Black and Blue” was created specifically to address the issues being protested and effectively put a stop to what they describe as government overreach, and over-regulation in the implementation of the ELD mandate.

Many of these truck drivers rely on a certain amount of flexibility in their operations. Being able to adjust time logs for miscellaneous things like the time it took to park or other unavoidable delays make a difference to the average trucker. Many of the required regulations that would result from the ELD mandate commendably strip these truckers of their ability to work with the level of flexibility they need.