Fleet Management by Objective: The Goal of Continuous Improvement

By Mike Antich

Do you manage your fleet from a tactical level — putting out day-to-day fires — or from a strategic level focusing on achieving specific long-term objectives? The exemplary fleet managers I've known over the years rise above the level of simply managing day-to-day work and are goal-oriented in all aspects of fleet management. These fleet managers practice strategic fleet management, which stresses the importance of achieving objectives and the use of metrics to benchmark progress.

Metrics is the process of developing objective sets of data to measure how your fleet is doing relative to goals. A metric is a quantifiable and repeatable standard of measurement. Each measurement can be expressed in a discrete number.

Metrics can be used to develop benchmarks, a standard by which you can measure progress against past performance. Benchmarks are trends or comparisons in metrics. Metrics are most valuable when they are compared to another metric or benchmark. By capturing metrics and benchmarking them, a fleet manager can demonstrate the fleet's improved performance.

For instance, how do you measure customer satisfaction? What are the metrics used to measure the performance of fleet operations?  If your fleet organization can't quantify its performance to management and politicians, they, most likely, will not understand (nor appreciate) the value of the services you are providing. This lack of understanding is often the catalyst for inquiries that put fleet managers in defensive positions attempting to justify their performance. Fleet managers should not assume management understands their business and knows they are doing a good job. To demonstrate their operations are competitive, they must develop performance measures available for review by all. The best way to do so is by using metrics and benchmarks.

Metrics Measure Desired Outcomes

To be truly effective, the metrics you develop and track need to be part of everyday fleet management. The most powerful metrics are those that directly measure desired outcomes such as cost reduction, performance improvement, service consistency, or anything that has numbers associated with it or that can be quantified. Other examples of fleet metrics include monitoring vehicle utilization, technician productivity, and vehicle downtime, or analyzing of fuel efficiency by vehicle and user group.

Choose the metrics that allow you to make decisions that benefit not only fleet operations, but also user departments. Decide which metrics are important to the organization and involve user groups in these decisions. Make sure everyone is on board and knows the importance of the metrics. Metrics are useless unless valid data is collected and entered into the fleet management system. The IT truism comes into play here: garbage in, garbage out. To demonstrate the value of metrics and benchmarks to user groups and management, start small and grow from there. Choose one area of fleet to focus on initially. Measure something that most likely will have a positive outcome. Collecting and analyzing metrics should be a continuous process. Fleet managers who use this approach will tell you that it works and once you get it going, will become a part of your daily routine.

Fleet managers should constantly evaluate whether additional metrics can be captured. By capturing this data, you can compare current fleet performance against historical data to set achievable performance goals. Metrics analyses will identify inefficiencies and allow you to focus on these specific areas. Whether or not your initiatives are successful in rectifying these inefficiencies will be borne out in subsequent metrics.

Develop performance metrics to optimize fleet resources. It is important to have an open-book policy and share data with management and user group customers. From the perspective of management, this will validate you are getting optimum fleet performance. Fleet managers can also increase fleet operation accountability and performance by organizing fleet user committees to address operational issues that arise between fleet operations and user department customers.

Management by Objective

When developing a metrics program, keep in mind the Chinese proverb: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." When you measure fleet performance, set realistic goals for improvement. When you achieve these goals, raise the bar and keep measuring. Maintaining an efficient fleet is not a goal, but a journey. You need to keep feeding metrics back into your processes to continually improve fleet's performance. Metrics can modify behavior. Push your metrics to your user group customers to show how they can improve departmental efficiency and make fleet more cost-effective.

You are what you measure.

Let me know what you think.

mike.antich@bobit.com