Construction Plant News investigates the benefits of the ABAX Smart Connect system.
A plant hirer or contractor of any reasonable size is likely to have a mixed fleet of machines from a number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). As a result, accessing accurate and up-to-date data on utilisation might involve sourcing the necessary information from multiple platforms. In order to render it into a useable format – which can be interrogated for the purposes of improving operational performance – it will then need to be collected and compiled in one place.
With ABAX Smart Connect machine owners and fleet managers can obtain on-going status updates on all their machines, and without any additional hardware. As a result, vital information on construction plant is available in a single location. The individual using the equipment, and its location is immediately accessible, whilst it’s also possible to set up geofences with automatic notifications in the event of these being breached.
Indeed, whether it’s emissions levels, driver hours, or maintenance schedules, everything falls easily to view, with no downtime for installation and one login. In addition, in the event of an error code or breakdown, mobile engineers can log into the back end of a machine’s systems, without physically attending, saving on the costly dispatching of mobile engineers to site, and potentially making machines operational much quicker.
The beauty of the ABAX proposition is that it is a brand neutral solution using technology that is already installed and ready for use. The service is available on any machine already equipped with an OEM GPS machine management system. As a result, users can obtain Application Programming Interface (API) details from a dealer and connect immediately, with the data then fed to Smart Connect. With older machines ABAX will supply a device that is self-installed on the machine. It has a long-lasting battery, and is GPS agnostic, which has the added benefit of compatibility with any mobile network. John Deere, Hitachi Construction Machinery Europe, Bell Equipment, Caterpillar, JCB, and Wirtgen are just some of the big names that are ABAX enabled, with Volvo the most recent to join.
At the same time, with the likes of emissions data, and the incidents of machine idling available, Smart Connect is a useful carbon footprint tracking tool. In the UK, where larger organisations are subject to environmental compliance regulations, it is then possible to provide detailed evidence on sustainability performance in the form of an ABAX Environmental Report. Armed with a greater awareness of CO2 output, organisations are then well-placed to address the issue and communicate their endeavours to an increasingly sustainability conscious client base.
About ABAX
ABAX as a company has been trading in the Nordics since 2009, with a rapidly growing presence in the UK since 2012. The telematics expert works with any business that has valuable assets it wants to track and protect, including contractors and plant hirers.
Its technology can track any vehicle – including vans, trucks, cars, bikes, and trailers – recording driving behaviour, location, and routes, which can then be used for MOT and insurance management, streamlining the admin functions of the business.
Here again there is a solid environmental argument for utilising the system. In the case of HGVs and LCVs, for example, routes can be optimised, whilst driver behaviour, such as sharp braking and accelerating can be identified, which not only saves on fuel – and flags up potentially unsafe behaviour – but can also reduce overall CO2 output.
Last year the company partnered with Zero Group in order to provide usage-based insurance and drive down the cost of cover. Here, the premium is determined by the distance covered or the amount of time spent in the vehicle, and it is ABAX who provide the vital and highly accurate supporting data. It’s a solution that works very well for seasonal businesses where vehicle usage might vary over the course of the year.
Secondary theft protection can also be achieved through GPS or Bluetooth (MINI2) devices, depending on the size of the asset in question.
