Fleet intelligence

The operational challenge

A dispatcher must allocate a job without double-booking a vehicle or treating an old location update as current availability.

People and information

Dispatch owns the assignment register. Job windows, vehicle and driver availability, maintenance holds, dated location observations and delivery status events provide the evidence for each allocation.

How the workflow could work

Reconcile vehicle and job identifiers, separate available capacity from existing commitments, and surface feasible options. The dispatcher approves an allocation; record the decision and update the assignment register. Track later changes against that approved job rather than creating an unrelated status entry.

Ownership and exceptions

A stale feed asks for a status check. Competing assignments ask for a capacity decision. A maintenance hold goes to the fleet owner. If an update fails, keep the job visibly unconfirmed and reconcile the register before retrying, so the same request cannot create a second assignment.

A useful first evaluation

Replay one desk’s completed dispatch shift before enabling live allocations. Include a late location event, an overlapping job and a vehicle withdrawn from service. The output is an assignment log showing which options were offered, who chose one and why exceptions were resolved or held.

Define the baseline

Measure complete-request-to-approved-assignment time, conflicts per allocated job and the age of location evidence at the decision. Compare equivalent job types and distinguish time waiting for customer information from dispatcher handling time. Agree acceptable exceptions before the pilot; no improvement is assumed.

Relevant systems

• Fleet platforms
• GPS data
• Driver apps
• Maintenance logs
• Billing systems
• Customer portals
• ERP data