Ten years ago Bell Equipment became the world's first OEM to design and implement its own fleet monitoring system; now a decade later the company has fine tuned and upgraded the system to offer real-time tracking as an industry first and set a new benchmark in user friendliness. According to Bell Equipment's Fleetm@tic Manager, Pieter Bester, the company engaged customers in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and South Africa to get an understanding of customers' immediate needs and focus points. Fleetm@tic has always offered accurate and detailed engineering and production information but some customers said they were overwhelmed by the volume of data. We have taken their comments onboard and now present the information with a much more user friendly interface.

"Importantly we are not taking away any information; we are just changing the face of Fleetm@tic. For example, the old automated reports are a popular feature of Fleetm@tic and will still be emailed to a customer's inbox. Likewise customers will still be able to use data from our standard onboard weighing system for invoicing purposes." A new-look website is integral to the improved user friendliness and will be launched in English, German and French with Russian and Spanish following soon.
"Older versions of software used by customers to access their Fleetm@tic data required Java or Citrix environment configuration. In contrast, the latest version of Fleetm@ic is ready to go making it less complicated for our customers. The aim of the new website, which utilises Google Maps technology, is to offer a multi platform solution that can work with any modern browser. This also makes it compatible with mobile devices such as tablet computers. We integrated with Google Maps because it is well known, offers quality maps and is uncomplicated to use," said Bester.

Fleetm@tic Product Developer, Deon Joubert said the structure and design of the website is focused on presenting information to the customer in a more sensible and practical way, with emphasis on production data. Customers are also able to filter and group live data to make it even easier to consume. "After signing in to the Fleetm@tic website a Google Map is displayed giving an overview or 'Dashboard' of all the machines in the fleet as well as indicating the location of nearby Bell Customer Service Centres.  The 'Dashboard' presents the fleet's current status at a glance so the customer can immediately get a feeling of what is happening to his machines without having to look for the information. 'Dashboard' information includes the machine's hours, location, ignition status, next service interval and the most recent key production parameters," said Joubert.

"Seasoned Fleetm@tic users will be happy to see the 'Timebar', which enables a customer to analyse at what times a machine has been operational. 'Shift Info' shows information like hours operated, tonnes moved, fuel consumption, total cycles completed and more," he added. An innovative feature is the 'Alert Ticker', similar to tickers used by TV news programmes, which has been introduced along the bottom of the webpage to display high priority alerts. The website’s interactive nature allows customers to acknowledge these alerts. "For example, there may be several events indicating that a specific operator prevents his truck from automatically cooling down the turbo. Acknowledging such events makes it easier for a fleet manager to take proactive steps and, if necessary, improve operator training. In the long run this will help to ensure that his fleet remains operational and productive for as long as possible," explains Joubert.

Commenting on the benefits of Fleetm@tic, Bester added that the system has become an important tool to ensure that onsite safety regulations and requirements are met. "Taking this into consideration we have reconfigured the geofencing feature to increase vehicle safety by facilitating geofencing in multiple zones based on speed limitations related to load, inclination and site conditions. For example on some mining sites certain haul roads are designated only for rigid trucks and a customer can create a geofence to ensure that his ADTs do not use these haul routes. Similarly if there is an area that is deemed not suitable for tipping, a geofence can be setup so that the tipping function does not work in that area."

Fleetm@tic is now available in two packages. The Standard package is fitted to every Bell Articulated Dump Truck (ADT) during the manufacturing process to provide fleet owners with aggregated data from the previous day or 24-hour shift and offers comprehensive productivity data. By comparison the Premium package now offers minute by minute real-time tracking in addition to the previously offered event- and tip-cycle driven data. Bester said: "In 2008 we took a major leap forward by being the first company to offer real global coverage when Iridium became our service provider with their pole-to-pole coverage. This, together with the superior transceiver technology supplied by Quake Global, enables Bell Equipment to offer its customers the best satellite monitoring system in the world.

"Now we are introducing GPRS monitoring which uses cell phone networks to complement our satellite coverage. This allows us the luxury of transmitting higher volumes of data, which makes real-time tracking viable." "Fleetm@tic is a true leader in the monitoring of heavy equipment fleets in terms of the information that we record and provide to our customers. With these latest enhancements we are confident that Fleetm@tic offers our customers even greater value by being able to efficiently integrate Fleetm@tic data into their operations for improved safety and productivity," said Bester.