South African businesses are going through a dark time as the country is currently in a load shedding cycle. And with power outages lasting up to 5 hours a day, they can’t afford to shut down. If they do, it may cost them as much as R5 billion daily, according to the civil society group, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse.
Therefore, to power their businesses and keep the lights on, many companies have been forced to invest in a generator. While those that can’t afford to buy one have been forced to seek alternatives such as hiring it. In order to meet demand, one generator hiring company, tasked Geotab Africa to create a solution that will enable them to speedily provide and monitor the movement of their generators to customers.
Project Requirements
The client’s brief was for Geotab to create a solution that will enable them to:
- Upload generator orders.
- Locate generators.
- Monitor progress of orders.
- Dispatch trucks loaded with the generators, using optimal routes to ensure timely deliveries and ultimately, customer satisfaction.
Using MyGeotab to Track Hired Generators
Clients are able to capture orders in the MyGeotab system. Clients can also load the number of generators per truck. Using MyGeotab’s route optimization tool, clients are able to determine whether deliveries can be fulfilled in one trip. To monitor the progress of orders, clients can view trips that have dispatched, have not dispatched, or are currently dispatching. Clients can also be kept informed of the estimated time of arrival, which is constantly updated.
For each of their customers, clients have service-level agreements (SLA). For example, a customer within 0 – 50 km radius have a maximum delivery time of 2 hours. With this SLA in mind, the client can select any vehicle that is not currently on a trip, and allocate the order to see if the SLA can be fulfilled. The client is able to geo-fence their depots and stipulate SLA conditions.
Furthermore, there are a variety of reports that the client can generate in order to analyse their operation. This includes:
- generator service calls
- generator orders
- generator movements
Author: Tony Zanninello: Senior Technician – Geotab Africa
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