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The future of the FM industry lies
in outsourced services.
Mark Rousseau
Digicore
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South Africa's roads are probably the riskiest environment the average law-abiding citizen is likely to face in his or her life. With annual road accident fatalities running at over 15 000, no one can argue the fact that motor vehicles are lethal weapons. "Stop!" We all chorus - It's not the vehicle that's to blame, it's the person behind the wheel! Of course it is. But how do we make better drivers, when accidents, AIDS and poor salaries are shrinking our professional driver pool by the day?
Paul Collings discusses the challenges facing commercial transport operators right now and its future, with DigiCore's Mark Rousseau.
It's an amazing thing," says Rousseau, Managing Director of DigiCore's SA Operations, "that a transport operator will allow an underskilled driver to get behind the wheel of his brand new 56-ton rig with full cargo, but wouldn't dream of letting the same driver close to his luxury German sedan."
And here lies the rub. There's so much 'blind' management going on in this industry, it's a wonder we have truck fleets at all. This may sound harsh, but accident statistics prove that there is way too much 'desperado' behaviour out there from operators and drivers alike.
Measuring for improvement
"It all boils down to that old saying - 'you can't mange what you don't measure'," Rousseau says. "No commercial fleet can hope to survive in today's operating environment without a Fleet Management system. But, operators need to realise that systems can only go so far in assisting them improve efficiency. Human expertise is needed to transform this data into management intelligence which can then be used to pinpoint errant driving behaviour and give fleet managers specific information that helps them communicate problem areas to respective drivers."
Once drivers fully understand the way the FM system works, that it measures their performance down to the second, they will begin to behave more professionally, reducing operating costs, down time and accidents, Rousseau says. "When the operator embraces the notion of performance-based pay and uses the system to manage a pro-active driver improvement process and then reward drivers accordingly, they will be motivated to perform better."
Expert intervention
Finding people with sufficient skill to leverage FM system data to bring about positive driver behaviour adjustments is no mean task. "For this reason, DigiCore has a specialized FM bureau service that offers customised driver grading reports, where weightings can be given to various criteria according to the application the driver works in. This allows managers to easily identify risk areas and address them timeously," adds Rousseau.
The need for specialised FM consulting within the truck transport industry has shifted the emphasis away from technology to services, explains Rousseau. "There's a huge need for education about the risk elements involved in any commercial transport business. The DigiCore bureau service has a team of consultants who visit client premises frequently to advise personnel on how best to streamline their FM processes, of which driver management is the most important."
While FM systems help operators set operational benchmarks, one fact must never be overlooked in the quest for optimised ton-kilometres, says Rousseau: "The driver is more important than the mobile asset."
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