The efficiency of your entire operation depends on the effectiveness of smaller parts, such as fuel management and skills development of your staff. Considering all of these elements means that great scope exists to optimise service delivery, minimise costs, and reduce the environmental impact of your fleet operations. Fleet managers, fleet engineers, strategic managers, and operational managers can all have a day-to-day impact on fleet efficiency.
By optimising your organisation for efficiency, you are reducing your fleet’s financial costs – and also reducing emissions.
FAQ
To optimise your fleet for efficient operations, consider the following steps:
Break down your operations into their basic components (e.g vehicle purchase, fuel purchase and management, driver training, route planning)
Understand the features that make your fleet different from others. Identify and understand your own specific fleet efficiency issues
Develop actions to support and improve the efficiency of your operations
Use the following questions to help you decide what actions to implement:
Have you ever undertaken a review of your fleet operations or a risk assessment to identify areas for potential improvement?
Do you have a fuel management programme in place?
Do you know the average MPG for vehicles in your fleet?
Could you find out who your most fuel efficient drivers are?
Are there options for you to move more goods with the same amount of energy?
Do you know if outsourcing some of your operations would save you money?
Is vehicle choice based on life-cycle running costs (also known as whole life costing or total cost of ownership)?
Have you looked recently at whether new technology and telematics systems could help to improve your operations?
Do you use KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure vehicle operations or maintenance costs (e.g pence per mile, direct maintenance cost per vehicle, loading or capacity utilisation) to assess the effectiveness of your operations?
Do you know how your costs compare with those of other organisations that have similar operations?
Do you provide your drivers with training in safe and fuel efficient driving techniques, and take steps to maintain their performance at the highest possible levels?
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