GPS – A Vital Component in a Fleet Management System
Srinivas Manda
InfoTech Enterprises Ltd., Plot 11, Madhapur,
Hyderabad 500033
Email: srinivas_manda@infotech.stph.net
Tel.No: +91-040-3100855
Abstract
Monitoring and managing the mobile assets are the core functionalities of any company dealing with the services, delivery or transport vehicles. Technologies help in supporting these functionalities from remote locations and update the managers with the latest positions of their mobile assets. Getting the real time latest position of their running mobile assets is a major requirement for the managers. GPS is one of the rapid growing technologies that provide the accurate geographic positional value of the mobile asset. The output positional value is used to derive various other features required for management of these mobile assets. There are various methods to obtain the positional value and GPS proves to be an ideal solution for calculation. This paper explains the role of GPS in managing the mobile assets and how this is advantageous over the other location calculating mechanisms.
Introduction
In any typical small to medium sized transport industry initial vehicle investment can represent 60% to 70% of the company’s fixed asset base. A significant amount of operational costs per vehicle are also incurred by the industry. Thus in any industry investing on mobile assets it is important to track and manage these assets for various reasons. This is more important in case of the industries investing in transport sector.
In earlier days managers have relied on log sheets, service forms and other paper record keeping systems to keep track of business fleet vehicle operations. To the extent possible, much of this process is automated. Technology now exists to further improve these processes.
Fleet management technology is the technology to measure and expand the areas of safety, reliability, and savings especially for industries that depend upon service, delivery and transport vehicles to accomplish their core business. Fleet Management deals with activities and functions related to maintenance, accountability, and efficient operation of company’s mobile assets.
GPS is one of the major components along with the communication and application software components in a fleet management system. Output of GPS component is a geographic positional value from which primary functionalities for fleet management are derived. An attempt has been made in this paper to bring out the importance of GPS in fleet management system.
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