Challenges faced by organizations that use fuel heavily.
Globally the price of fuel has increased tremendously, many a times when the world is hopeful of a drop in fuel prices, somehow something happens and sends the prices even higher, for example, we have seen the wars in crude oil producing countries, global geopolitics and the COVID pandemic economic recovery measures cause significant upward changes in global oil prices; notwithstanding, the numerous de-carbonification campaigns and the shift to green energy.
Crude oil is however a resource the world may not do without at least in the foreseeable future, it is also a commodity whose prices have huge impact across several sectors of the economy, a slight change in price is felt far and wide.
It has therefore become necessarily for industries that rely heavily on fuel for production to think of technologies that can help in optimization of fuel usage, this may mean difference between success and failure for such organizations.
In addition to the burden of fuel costs occasioned by global fuel increase, organizations that rely heavily on fuel have another problem – contending with rogue machine operators and drivers who by virtue of being the people with the vehicles, some thousands of kilometers away from the office have become the weakest link in controlling fuel expenses.
The vehicle owner or the fleet manager in most cases has lost control of operational expenses associated with fuel; the only option left is to accept as the truth what the plant operator or driver reports.
Rescuing the vehicle owners from unnecessary fuel related costs.
Deployment of fuel management systems have emerged as one key solution that enables organizations reduce fuel related expenses, this kind of systems comprises of arrays of sensors and fuel management software, the system in its basic form determines the amount of fuel in the tank and displays to the end user in a standard way through various mechanisms, be it web based application, mobile application or through short messaging.
Nothing gives peace to the vehicle owner than knowing how much fuel is in the tank in real-time while at the same time knowing the exact location of the vehicle, GPS tracking combined with fuel monitoring systems comes in handy in helping fleet managers and vehicle owners have full visibility of what is going on.
In reality many vehicle owners have had their vehicles auctioned for failing to service their vehicle loans, if one interrogates the situation further the common problem reported by such owners is that the operational costs were higher than expected and some element of driver dishonesty aggravated the problem further.
Generally speaking, the business sense of venturing into the transport sector without means of control is lost, internal research study carried out by Smart Embedded Systems Limited showed that organizations that have deployed fuel management systems in Kenya have higher rates of asset finance loan repayment completion.
The same research showed that different vehicle owners and fleet managers would be interested in different kind of information to help them improve business performance, to some knowing how much fuel the vehicle consumed in a day would be enough, others would wish to have additional information for example, the tabulation of efficiency in terms of kilometers travelled for every litre of fuel consumed by the vehicle.
In other cases especially where fleet owners were dealing with human resource issues there was a strong desire for comprehensive fleet management system, examples of highlighted cases were where the employees were involved in fuel theft deals, classic cases were where rogue drivers colluded with petrol stations pump attendants to put less fuel and share the benefit, other related instances and which were rampant mostly among long distance commercial vehicle operators is fuel siphoning, in practical sense we have seen cases of trucks parked on road sides with people fetching fuel from the tanks in jerry cans after paying the driver some money.
To alleviate the above highlighted fleet managers challenges broad-based fuel monitoring system are therefore proposed, the idea behind is to present a complete view of the vehicle usage and operation, this empowers the man sitting in the office to have first-hand information and take corrective action at the right time if the situation so calls.
A combination of technologies make this possible, firstly there is the fuel level data acquisition via appropriate sensors and devices, then there is the relaying of this information plus other associated parameters on vehicle state to the fuel management software via a communication network, finally the information is analyzed and presented meaningful to the fleet manager or vehicle owner.
Through such systems and depending on the algorithms used it will be possible to know how much fuel is in the tank in real-time, how much was filled, how much was consumed, and how much has been siphoned. All this information is availed to the user through notifications to mobile phones and reports available at the click of a button in ideal cases.
Smart Embedded Systems puts fuel monitoring ability in customers’ hands.
Smart Embedded systems limited in one such vendor with ability to provide comprehensive fuel management system in Kenya and Africa in general, the system rides on multi-featured IoT platform augmented with high quality sensors, hardware devices and engineering expertise.
Through this approach smart embedded system has won customer trust in provision of the best fuel management system in Kenya that comprises of data acquisition, data communication and data analysis for cost effective fleet operations.
Among the salient features and functions provided by our system are real-time and historical tracking, Geofencing or geo-zoning capability, relaying of critical alarms, numerous fleet management reports and fuel management specific information.
Among the fuel related specific information provided by Smart Embedded Systems is real-time fuel level in the tank and the graphical representation of fuel consumption, which enables the vehicle owner to see how the vehicle has been performing with regard to speed, distance travelled vis a vis fuel consumed.
Of additional significance is the ability to receive real-time notifications to the vehicle owner for events associated with fuel usage, this includes real-time alerts on fuel fill showing the location and exact number of litres fueled.
On the other hand when fuel siphoning happens a real-time notification alarm is pushed to the vehicle owner bearing the exact number of litres stolen and the location of the vehicle, this makes smart embedded systems limited solution one of the best fuel theft monitoring system in the market.