Fleet Management For Efficient Fuelling System In Umgeni Water Board
Question
Task: Prepare a literature review on the fleet management for efficient fuelling system in Umgeni Water Board using relevant sources.
Answer
2. Literature Review
2.1 Chapter Overview
Fleet services refer to when a business lease a fleet or hire a management for fleet. All that is related to helping a business to for selection, maintenance, optimisation and management of their fleets are covered by the term of fleet services. As per Zulu (2019), this service is specifically related to take care of the vehicles of an organisation when it is put together. Furthermore, a fleet manager has no leverage over this external impact yet such as shifts in regulation, confusion with the industry and the spiralling costs. In coordinating fleet management operations, the right tools will play an enormous role.
This chapter reviews literature on fleet management and different fuelling strategies used by organisations to achieve operational efficiency. The literature of various scholars is analysed in order to understand the depth of Umgeni Water Board transportation challenges and success factors for strategic improvement. The chapter first elaborates the concept of fleet management, followed by a description of fuelling systems in state entities. The chapter also discusses fleet management strategy, tactics and approaches used for successful and smooth business operation. The SCOR model is further discussed. Finally, the gaps or lacks in conducting this literature review is discussed, which can be useful for future studies.
2.2 Conception of Fleet Management
According to Arsenault (2020), the administrative approach of fleet management enablesorganisationsin organising and coordinating work-vehicles with a target of improvement in efficiency, reduction in costs, and provision of compliance with laws of government. Arsenault asserts that while these are most oftenutilised for vehicle tracking, fleet management engagesthe following and recording of mechanical diagnostics and behaviour of driver. The concept of fleet management is a procedure followed by managers use to handle business transport related issues and assets from acquisition to disposal (Levi-Bliechet al., 2019, p. 360). This allows the businesses in cost reduction, efficiency improvement and compliance assurance throughout the entire operation.
According to Arsenault (2020), fleet management is not only limited within the establishment of cost-saving measures, regular vehicle maintenance schedules, driver safety; but it also has four key components like driver management, operations management of fleet services, financial management for fleet services, and asset management (Levi-Bliechet al., 2019, p. 356). Driver management is an element of monitoring and influencing the behaviour and performance of the drivers particularly on usage of fuel and the vehicle. According to Zulu (2019), it is normal for organisations to report a 100% increase in the incidents connected to the behaviour of drive.The fleet management system is necessary to improve the management of organisational assets, financial stability, driving management and fuelling system. Hence, efficient fleet management enhances the organisational transport operation of an organisation. The following section discusses the methods of fleet fuelling in state entities.
2.3 Fuelling System in the State Entities
Management of the fleet for most organisations is modular and flexible in its design (Manson, 2018) so as to automatically control fleet utilisation and the performance of drivers. According to Manson (2018), fleet management systems capture business and operational information which include travel distances; service planned and fuel consumption in a particular project. He posit that state entities in South Africa use a fuelling system that captures vehicle information and refuelling records. In agreement with Manson (2018), ALI, IQBAL & ALI (2019) asserts that fuelling systems in state and private organisations have been digitalised and retain advanced technological features for efficiency and record keeping. Most state entities in South Africa have implemented technological fuelling systems to monitor fuel use its cost in their daily operations. The risk of too much dependency on the driver get reduced significantly as the drivers themselves get monitored on how they use the organisation’s fuel resources (Navarro, 2020, p. 4).
According to Akshayet al. (2019), drivers are an important stakeholder connected to the fuelling system of vehicles in fleet management operations. Drivers play a role of liaising with fleet managers on any vehicle related issues including fuelling. The fuelling system employed by Umgeni Water has been able to efficiently cover the aspects of refuelling and vehicle identification, the proactive engagement of the system in monitoring and determining fuel requirements has lagged. The modules utilised by the entity have remained static since the inception of the system in the year 2001. Therefore, for the further information about the fleet management system and its strategy, the next section of this study will provide the efficient information about the strategy of fleet management. This will help to gather brief knowledge about the utilisation and effectiveness of fleet management strategy within the business of Umgeni Water Board.
2.4 Strategy for Fleet Management
According to the statement of Wittmann, Neuner&Lienkamp (2020), the fleet management strategies have to be implemented within the organisational management process in order to achieve profit margins during the operation. Mardiasmo et al. (2008) asserts that an inclusive fleet management strategy requires accountability and transparency in the decision making process to curb exploitative processes in the public sector. The implementation of the strategy requires commitment from management. Also, due to appropriately discuss the fleet management strategy some of significant division of this strategy have been discussed in the next section of this study.
2.4.1 Demand prediction of resources for fleet management
Wittmann, Neuner&Lienkamp (2020) advances that a fleet management strategy that relies on demand prediction will increase operational efficiencies. The risk associated with prediction or forecasting of budget and other resources that should always be considered as it can cause significant misallocation of resources (Chopra & Meindl, 2007, p. 216). The predictive strategy requires accuracy in planning, collaboration and systems support.The ease of predicting demand for staff transportation in Umgeni Water depends on planned operational activities and staff roster. Thus, Umgeni Water Board has implemented the strategy to effectively manage its fleet that helps to provide an advance technological system within its fuelling, driving and vehicle management process.
2.4.2 Integrated fleet management
The integral fleet management structure, according to Mare (2015), requires workforce decentralisation to promote fleet management at satellite stage. The decentralised solution addresses organisational requirements to ensure continuous and effective satellite service delivery. The centralisation or decentralisation judgement must be focused on the organisation's general perspective (Fleet Finance, 2012). Certain businesses deduce that fleet roles for different geographic and internal functions will better be shifted to fleet management (Fleet Finance, 2012). Stanton (2018 ) states that it is operating in a dispersed fleet service system with complex specifications and areas which are broadly distributed geographically.The direction of the company's policy for fleet management should be clearly articulated. Umgeni Water Board has a centralised management approach that benefits from continuity and central experience. The centralised strategy of the Umgeni Water Board is backed by its objective of a fully integrated fueling system aimed at minimising human intervention.
2.5 Effective uses of data
According to the viewpoint of Said, Nicoletti& Perez-Hernandez (2016), effective use of data is achieved through the integration of digital communication technology. In order to provide accurate-time spatial and output data for fleet machines, telematics is used as an application of cellular communications, vehicle tracking systems and position sensors. Fleet managers strive to attempt to find the opportunities to use that information to make more effective fleet management decisions, considering the vast volume of real-time elemental knowledge made accessible by telematics (Davidson & Olsen III, 2019). Moreover, in order to maximise servicing, fuel control, driver rest, protection and funding, whole transport vehicle fleets can be monitored and identified, from trucks to vans to cars to aircraft. This reduces the costs and risks involved in investment in the infrastructure, transport, performance, productivity and compliance with regulations.
2.6 Identification of critical areas to develop
Umgeni Water Board found its critical areas during its operation and management of transport, vehicle, drivers, and the assets and financial stability. As per the statement of Sadovskiy (2019), the transport system needs to include more people within their operation and has to provide sufficient knowledge and training. Through which, it prominently helps to find critical areas within their operation throughout the expression of newly recruited candidates. Furthermore, the organisations need to find the critical areas like extensive working hours, low amount of pay rate, hazy career path, the crisis of comfort. Through finding these areas, the organisation develops these areas for the betterment of its operation. Also, the next part of this strategy will evaluate the cost that have been purchased by the organisation in behind of the employee.
2.7 Evaluating the benefit/cost of employee use
According to, Allen, Cullinan&McCleery (2016), employees tend to use fleet vehicles for their personal matters and organisations mitigate this problem by limiting provision of fleet vehicles strictly for business uses. Adopting this approach helps the organisation to achieve profits from its operations. A different criterion is used to compensate employees that fall in the category of essential users, and thereby, the pay rate of the employees has been increased by some percentage of their existing salary amount (Xia et al., 2016, p. 2666). Thus, the next part of this fleet management strategy will efficiently help to evaluate the investment for driver safety and their training process.
2.8 Investment in driver safety and training
Rudyk, Szczepa?ski&Jacyna (2019) postulates that transport organisations should focus on the provision of training process of drivers; and invest in developing the training process and safety of the drivers during their performance. In the case of Umgeni Water Board, the organisation, implementation of the fleet management strategy, will provide most proficient training to its drivers to make them more confident and efficient. In this way, the study of this paper also provides the critical success factors of the implementation of fleet management strategy within the organisational business practices.
2.9 Critical Success Factors in Fleet Management Process
Critical success factors (CSF) are used to demonstrate or define a few crucial aspects that may concentrate on organisational progress. Identifying CSFs is crucial as it helps businesses to concentrate their work on improving their capacity to meet critical success factors. It also assists to encourage companies to determine whether they can establish the appropriate conditions to meet success factors. There are several metrics available when a business needs to analyse its supply chain performance. A somewhat different perception of a part of the supply chain is given by each output metric. According to Palma-Mendoza (2014), different procedures and proper time of carrying out re-design of the supply chain is necessary for recognising the relevant procedures and chooses a target for re-designing. A company's big decision is to prioritise the critical metrics in the supply chain and how they are utilised. Many businesses use efficiency metrics in the fleet supply chain that are easy to quantify but do not generally reflect the true value of the supply chain for employee transportation and fuelling strategy.
2.9.1 SCOR Model for Performance Measurement
If the supply chain is used by Umgeni Water Board as the circulatory mechanism of the business, it is important that it runs as efficiently as possible, unimpeded, and distribution is performed when required and when appropriate. It may be as complicated as managing all of the entity's dependent organs to manage their sourcing, manufacturing, transport and customer support divisions. It indicates to more to it than the simple solution of metrics or key performance measures (KPIs). Monitoring a variety of cohesive steps can strengthen the alignment of your enterprise and make the consumers agile in the final analysis. As stated in Supply Chain Council, Inc. (2010), the “supply chain operations reference” (SCOR) model is identified as the most efficient method of maintaining highly complex assets throughout the world. SCOR model elaborates the business activities associated with all the stages of satisfaction for the consumer demands. Six primary management procedures are included in this model, such as planning, sourcing, making, delivering, returning and enabling. It is a crucial tool for the analysis of employee transportation and fuelling strategy in Umgeni Water Board due to being designed and maintained in supporting various complexities of supply chain across industries (APICS, 2017). The intension of the performance attributes of SCOR model, which includes reliability, responsiveness, agility, costs and assets, is providing uniform definitions, processes, ideas and metrics to explain any supply chain, irrespective of its configuration or complexity.
As Umgeni Water Board is given the responsibility of employee transportation and efficient fuelling system, the entity must develop a plan on the services they are capable of delivering at the present moment. The water-supplier giant must think about pinpointing the opportunities to improve and create a balance with consumer demands with the necessities for higher efficiency and lower cost. Determining the strategic CSFs through utilisation of SCOR model is the most effective method to understand what the company needs to fulfil at present and in the near future, so that it can meet the aim of its current business operation. Being customer-focused, as stated by ASCM (2020), the first three performance attributes of the SCOR model, should be evaluated by Umgeni Water Board in this process. The entity’s strategic task is to identify the competitive demands for every quality and prioritise them, recognising that they must select where they can be best in class and where they are appropriate to compete at an average standard. Using SCOR model, there are three levels in process that is prescribed for understanding how the business should operate business or tailor its information flow or system of employee transportation and fuelling.
Reliability: The key factor for Umgeni Water Board is reliability as experiencing downtime is not affordable by the entity. This attribute of performance is connected with the ability of the consistent performance of tasks asp per anticipation. Service delivery on schedule and stock the required amount of equipment are the standard attributes of a reliable enterprise (Ptc.com, 2020). As supply chain management (SCM) solutions help to appropriate stock or service supplies, the business may have assured quality of operation without lack of output as a result of delays. Responsiveness: This is the pace of performance of the service agency. There are a variety of cycle-time metrics that can be applied for measurement of the responsiveness of the enterprise. SCM solution enables Umgeni Water Board to meet customer requirements. A detailed model of the method estimates goal levels and optimises inventory efficiency (Ptc.com, 2020). The best services are available at the required time in a responsive fleet management company, minimising costs of service interruptions.
Agility: This is the capacity to respond to external pressures, to respond to changing market conditions or to retain competitive advantages. Flexibility and adaptability provide for the SCOR strategies for agility. On the basis of these variables, an agile business company has the capacity to adapt (ASCM, 2020). It addresses the question of whether Umgeni Water Board's procedures position it in a place where it receives comfort and confidence to changes in the marketplace, as well as gain or maintains the competitive edge.
2.10 Conclusion
The chapter has included a range of scholarly and online articles on fleet management system to evaluate the employee transportation and fuelling system of Umgeni Water Board. In this process, effective use of fuelling strategy, along with the effective utilisation of data in fleet management in described. The assessment of critical areas for development has recognised the inclusion of more human power into the company as well as necessity of consideration on their working hours, payment rate, comfort etc. It is crucial for the company to understand its CSFs for effectively operating fleet management. The SCOR model analysis has shown the importance of scheduled service delivery, adaptation capacity and increase efficiency in inventory for the company.
The collection of a literature review regarding the research work of fuel efficiency and fleet management of a particular company precisely elaborates the employee transportation and vehicle fuelling process of the concerned organisation. As this data is focused on finding CSFs for the company based on its performance metrics of the SCOR model, the other aspects of the model could not be explored in this paper. Also, the impact of the fleet management strategy used by Umgeni Water Board could not be covered from other aspects of the organisation.
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