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Workable Solutions Found As important to school district and contractor transportation maintenance as the service technicians who work on buses are the software programs they employ to run a tight garage. Maintenance software varies depending on desired usage. It's up to the transportation department to decide what it needs to schedule preventative maintenance to keep its fleet in tip-top condition. With school district budgets continuing to shrink, they must be able to get as much life out of its school buses as possible. And with tougher 2010 federal air quality standards right around the corner, it's vital that these school buses retain performance value the older they get. STN contacted the major school bus maintenance software providers in April to determine the core constituencies of their offerings so school districts can compare and contrast. Dolphin Dolphin SoftSense Company began writing software in 1984, primarily developing custom accounting and business management applications. In 2003, after four years developing and beta testing preventative maintenance software for school bus fleets, the company released Dolphin Fleet Management. It is a system whose overall architecture includes preventive maintenance, driver management, parts inventory, field trip and resource scheduling, routing and budgeting. "Dolphin Fleet Management is a very targeted solution, focusing only on school bus fleets," said President Jeff Yeager. "This enables our application to exclude some of the clutter that other applications that also serve the trucking industry, cannot, i.e., color." A Microsoft-based software, Dolphin says that the lack of required third-party software, little maintenance or setup by the school district's IT department and open architecture keeps the cost down for fleets ranging in size from 10 to 1,200 buses. The software tracks federal safety recalls insuring and reporting on compliance, monitors manufacture service bulletins, manage special internal projects, and manages state mandates and specifications. Inventory control can almost be completely automated to allow departments to updating track vendor pricing to know what vendor is the least expensive and how many times a certain vendor changes its price. It also records what part went on which bus, tracks parts still under warranty and generates stock orders to maintain a stock room. The software also offers driver management, security permissions to lock certain users out of various areas of the system, and bar coding for parts, work orders, equipment, buses and employee name tags. Easy Bus Touting flexibility, the Easy BusT school bus maintenance record keeping system is designed specifically for users who may not have any previous computer experience. With very few required fields, school districts and contractors can customize virtually all data and any type of vehicle can be entered and tracked for service. Michael Hinckley, president of Easy Bus, said the system provides warnings of upcoming preventative maintenance and reports on mileage usage, fuel consumption, maintenance history, and cost per mile, to name a few. "With an optional module for parts inventory, Easy BusT can be used to keep track of all part information in 'real time'," he said. The interface for Easy BusT has more the feel of a web-page with "point-and-click" capability than an old DOS-based menu driven program. When the user sees something of interest, they simply click on it, and all relevant options for that item are displayed. Hinkley said that Easy BusT is highly scalable. Users can begin using only a small portion of the program and then grow into using more of its capability with time. Edulog Education Logistics, Inc. says its FleetPro Fleet Maintenance System offers quick and easy access to an entire fleet's worth of information: information which can be shared across the web and even integrated with on-vehicle sensors for real-time tracking and reporting. By keeping a complete history of every vehicle, monitoring operating costs, repairs, maintenance services, fuel consumption, tracking costs for each vehicle separates preventative maintenance from corrective maintenance for more effective analysis and decision-making. Pete Salinas, Edulog's sales manager, said that FleetPro is fully integrated with the company's other software solutions, including its new GPS/vehicle tracking interface. "Like the rest of our products, FleetPro is designed as a set of modules to accommodate each district's specific needs," Salinas said. "Scalability offers as many or as few features as desired, allowing the product to grow with the district." FleetPro's modules manage all of the fleet's aspects including vehicle databases, parts inventory, work orders, fuel tracking, tire tracking, personnel, and reports. Each module fully integrates with all the others to offer truly robust capabilities. All modules are Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) compliant. International Truck & Engine Corp. Introduced to both the truck and bus industries in April of this year, AwareT is a telematics technology that links a school bus' electrical system to a manager's PC. Telematics offers a way for school bus companies to track the location, monitor routes and performance, diagnose maintenance issues, and ensure driver and vehicle security via wireless telemetry, regardless of whether the vehicle is parked or mobile. It bolsters fleet management and security with a sophisticated automatic vehicle locator system. Like an electronic umbilical cord, International telematics moves telemetry and location information via cellular wireless technology from the school bus into the office or workstation of fleet and maintenance managers. Back-end telematics software then organizes and packages the information, displaying it through a secure Web site portal that provides real-time data reporting and administration on each vehicle in customers' fleets. The system reports mileage, and monitors fuel consumed, idle time, operating time, brake applications and more. It creates preventative maintenance reminders based on engine hours, odometer readings and/or calendar time. While this system may not at the moment offer as many functionalities as some of the other maintenance software programs, it is the only one among the group currently offering wireless technology. TransFinder Maintenance software typically does not incorporate routing and scheduling modules. Transfinder's software does. It allows the company's query-based software to compare transportation plans against actual data for the utmost budgetary controls, said CEO Antonio Civitella. "Other companies focus mainly on maintenance program. Our strength is we can do both," he said. "Let's say your policy at the school is, after so many hours of operation you do a certain event, take a brake system perhaps," Civitella said. "Based on what you're projecting for routes, you can project out a (service) deadline." Civitella also said Transfinder keeps its programs open-source, allowing its approximately 550 clients to retain control of all data. TransTraks Perseus Associates, LLC distributes this new software suite of modules designed to handle all the major functions of running a school bus operation in one complete package. The networked, multi-user system includes a comprehensive Vehicle Maintenance Module designed for the most demanding of environments, handling every aspect of vehicle maintenance, including work orders, parts inventory, vendor information, open purchase orders and balances, customer invoicing, and charge backs. It also tracks all required vehicle safety and service inspections. It has a user friendly Windows interface that is easy to operate. "It is a paperless electronic system into which mechanics can enter maintenance information and that generates hard copy work order tickets," said Greg A. Marvel, president of Perseus Associates. "The client decides how 'paperless' the system will be." TransTraks comes with a comprehensive parts inventory system that automatically keeps track of inventory levels as parts are used in the work order system. In addition, TransTraks has an extensive Vendor Information component, allowing the users to order parts on-line from vendors offering the service, and keep track of the dollar charges to open purchase orders for each vendor. The Safety Inspection and Service System provides maintenance personnel with instant reports on which vehicles are coming due for safety inspections and services. Trapeze Group The company's software boasts "everything a school district needs to manage fleet inventories, maintenance, purchasing, and reports for more efficient vehicle operation" and over 220 installations in the U.S. and Canada. FLEET offers easy inventory control, management of purchases, work orders, vehicle and fuel as well as quick billing and reports creation. New functionality exists for forecasting and scheduling labor on preventative maintenance work, with an overall focus on document management for specific equipment and inventory parts. This includes the unlimited storage and retrieval of digital photos, documents, e-mails and web pages. FLEET also offers the ability to capture odometer readings and other vehicle data from other Trapeze products that incorporate a mobile data terminal and GPS systems. Other features include recording passengers by trip and warnings on data entry windows by color coding problem areas such as low inventory stock, due preventative maintenance and low purchase order balance. FLEET is not web-enabled, but Trapeze says it has several clients using the module through a CITRIX environment. FLEET can be operated from remote locations. Ron Turley Associates The company has produced Fleet Management software since 1980. With thousands of users throughout the world, the software has evolved along with the industry and helps managers maintain their fleets to top-of-the-line standards. RTA services over 200 bus fleets throughout the US and is in use by over a thousand other fleets as well, according to company president Ron Turley. Compatible with all Windows platforms and most backend UNIX platforms, RTA offers solutions for large to small fleets, with one shop or many shops to manage. RTA also integrates seamlessly with the Zonar Driver pre- and post-trip inspection system, allowing quick entry of driver reports and quick response from the shop. The RTA Fleet Management system includes a full work order processing module, with a paperless shop module. Parts inventory and purchasing are included in the base package, as well as mechanic productivity tracking, inter-departmental billing, fuel pump and tank tracking - RTA also integrates with over 200 electronic fueling vendors - tire tracking, and vehicle and asset PM tracking. Additional options provide a full motor pool module, a driver reporting module, report writer, tool tracking and many others. VersaTrans VersaTrans Solutions, Inc. says its FleetVision client-server application and software suite component gives superior visibility into the management and associated costs of fleet equipment service through its interface. VersaTrans FleetVision allows users to schedule preventive maintenance, track fuel and part inventories, complete the work order process, track component warranties, monitor fuel usage, track employee certifications, and manage the administrative end of running a school bus garage "By using this intuitive fleet management software, shop foremen can track data relating to their fleets in one centralized, easy-to-access location," said Karen Buckhoff, product manager. "The software's many components work seamlessly together and reporting is a snap, so it's easy to make decisions using this data, too. For example, users can generate a tread depth report to make important safety-related decisions about tire rotation and replacement." The informative FleetVision Today window gives users a single-screen, dashboard view into the time-sensitive information critical to running a bus garage. In this window, users find overdue or coming-due preventive maintenance, expired or near expiring employee certifications, in-process work orders, and a list of the number of parts near or below minimum stock level. The company currently has nearly 350 users of VersaTrans FleetVision and serves over 1,000 clients with all of its software products combined. Source: Reprinted from School Transportation News, June 2005. All rights reserved.
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