5G brings various advantages to fleet management. Specifically, with
5G’s fast speed and mass connectivity, it allows real-time transmission and analysis of complex data that can help fleet managers better monitor drivers, check fleet conditions and plan routes.
For fleet managers, they are faced with certain challenges and pain points.
Theft, losses of freights, vehicle breakdowns due to lack of proper maintenance and accidents resulting from reckless driving can all cost companies significantly. Fleet management solutions, then, can help managers deal with these issues.
Currently fleet management solutions mostly use 3G/4G cellular technologies which have certain barriers and limitations. These can be better addressed in the 5G era. “The three main challenges in front of fleet operators using 3G/4G network today are end-to-end visibility, fragmented data collection and poor analytical insights leading to decreased operational efficiency,” said Shaurya Singh, Industry Analyst for Security at Frost & Sullivan. “5G network will help in solving these challenges through reduced latency resulting in increased network responsiveness, faster real-time transmission of data and enhanced support to sensors and IoT devices.”
“It’s about lots of integrated data being available in real time. Operational managers, via AI and BI applications, will be able to consume, process and understand data on higher-speed networks and AI-based platforms. The use of this technology will provide predictive information rather than masses of historical information, leading to gains in routing and driving efficiency and load efficiency, along with assigning the best vehicles and drivers for a certain task based on cost, maintenance and reliability,” said Andrew Rossington, VP of Next Generation Platform at Teletrac Navman.
That said, 5G can make fleet managers' job more efficient in the following three ways.
Vehicle and freight monitoring
Nothing would be more undesirable than having trucks or vehicles suffering from breakdowns or other problems, which have the potential to cost the company significantly on repairs or un-delivered items. Being able to remotely monitor vehicle conditions via fleet management solutions rather than checking each vehicle at the yard, then, can be quite helpful for fleet managers who can benefit even further from 5G and the fast speed and reduced latency it allows. “With the help of sensors and IoT, fleet managers will have real-time information on the health of their fleet. Using sensors and advanced analytics, fleet managers/drivers can get information on equipment health, vehicles service timelines, tracking exact locations of moving vehicles, fuel utilization and collision notifications,” Singh said.
Further, 5G can help with effective tracking and monitoring of freights which may be subject to theft and damage. “With high-precision visibility at the freight and truck level, geofencing can be used to track freight status and location, and additional monitors used to track key information like the temperature, shock, and humidity of sensitive or hazardous freight. This will both decrease the chance of ruined freight, and make precision scheduling of trucks and shipments easier and more feasible,” said Terrence Wang, Head of Marketing at FreightPath.
Route optimization
With 5G, real-time communications between trucks and the backend operations center can mean instant, real-time route optimization instead of the fleet manager calling each driver on which route to take. “5G networks will improve route efficiency by optimizing route network, give alerts in case of traffic jams/collisions in the journey ahead, and keeping drivers clear of dangerous routes,” Singh said. “This will lead to reduced travelling time and increased fuel savings.”
Monitoring driver
Finally, to prevent accidents, fleet managers can use 5G to better monitor drivers. “The fast transmission of data will translate into increased operational efficiency. Sensors and data analytics will give insights on driver behaviors such as dangerous driving, hard braking, vehicle idling time, over-speeding, seat belt utilization and drowsy driving. Fleet operators, through data insights, can then train drivers through training,” Singh said.