Stay Connected. Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Telematics System?

Today, most large equipment manufacturers offer telematic systems to help you monitor important data on your machines. These systems are great tools that help you boost productivity.

But you are maximizing the effectiveness of your system? Tracking operation hours, idle time, and location are the most common uses for telematic systems; but utilizing the technology and data these systems provide in other ways can produce even more results.

Diagnostic check-ups

If a machine is not running, it is costing you money. If there was a way to identify a lingering issue with a machine before it became a major issue, that would be a very useful. Most telematic systems can do this. Contact your manufacturer to see if their system can be set up to send alerts if any diagnostic codes are occurring in your machine. This way you can know immediately if something need addressed before it is too late.

Training

It is no secret that finding skilled and qualified operators is a challenge for everyone in the industry. For that reason, training new employees has become more important to building a workforce. Using data from your equipment telematics is a great way to provide real-life feedback to operators. Most systems have the ability to create profiles for operators, letting you see their production in black-and-white statistics. Using this information can help you educate new – and even experienced – operators on what they are doing well, and what needs to be improved.

Security

For obvious reasons, you can’t take your equipment back to the shop every night and store it safely in a locked garage. It has to remain at the jobsite. This is a calculated risk that owners take every day. With GPS tracking, telematics systems are able to keep an eye on your equipment, even when you can’t. If a machine is stolen from a jobsite, tracking it with GPS can help you locate it and allow the authorities to help you recover it.

Save fuel, save money

A machine that isn’t running is costing you money. A machine that is running – but not doing anything – is costing you double. Tracking idle time is an easy and efficient way to save on fuel costs and eliminate unproductive hours being put on machines. View the data and see what the idle time is for your fleet, then set a goal to get to. Doing this can save you money now in fuel costs and also keep machine hours low, extending its life and keeping its value high.

Develop best practices

Many factors go into creating a set of best practices. Developing them based on data and in-the-field results is a way to endure that they truly are the best way to operate. Using telematics to compare jobsite data like machine usage, fuel burn, material moved, and more can help you determine what really is the best way to attack a jobsite. Also, having useful statistics that clearly show how those practices were developed is also a great tool in explaining them and implementing them into operation.