Fleet Size: 8,000 Vehicles5,000 Trailers & EquipmentCore Goals & KPIs: Rightsizing InitiativesCost-SavingsUsage MetricsIndustry: UtilitiesUtilimarc Products: Business Intelligence Platform

How can fleets identify cost-saving opportunities without sacrificing level of service?

A common challenge as fleets grow larger is ensuring that you have the right amount of assets without over-extending and taking on unnecessary costs. Like many large fleets across North America, with wide operational regions and unique operational challenges, American Electric Power (AEP) wanted a better understanding of their usage metrics and cost-saving opportunities that already existed within their fleet's data.

A main goal for AEP was to uncover these cost-savings opportunities by delving into a rightsizing initiative, which would help to identify which vehicles were under-used and no longer needed, as well as better understanding their lifecycles (taking into account longer lead times as of 2022).

The question isn't "how many assets do you need?"

Instead, it's "how many assets does it take to meet and serve the demand?"

By bringing data in from multiple siloed sources (usage, maintenance and cost data),  Utilimarc’s Business Intelligence Platform is able to help AEP access a full right-sizing report and deeper insights into their fleet’s usage metrics broken down by month and per asset, as well as cost-savings opportunities. In order to ensure that this analysis is as accurate as possible, the Utilimarc team constrained the types of vehicles participating in the analysis to assets that perform the same type of work and share the same region. This rightsizing analysis was completed on a selection of 3,000 heavy-duty vehicles from AEP's total asset count of 13,000.

Our reporting helped AEP pinpoint the "bloat" of their asset count. Breaking down the details of their unit listings, giving each department the insights as to which vehicles are critical (or necessary to keep) for emergency or day-to-day operations, and which can afford to be released - in turn, created a massive opportunity to cut down on costs for the fleet. Or, instead of releasing, these assets could now be re-positioned within the service area for higher efficiency.

Rightsizing and usage analyses helps fleets like AEP stay on top of lead times, budget allocation and vehicle lifecycle. The Utilimarc rightsizing analysis looks at the entirety of customer data - like maintenance, usage and availability, and enterprise resource planning data, rather than just the initial asset count - in order to determine how operations are maintaining vehicles and using them over a full calendar year to account for peaks (storm response, for example) and valleys in utilization.With Utilimarc's full access to our clients' hierarchical data - we can view and recommend a total asset count that serves the demands of their customer base and separate regions, informs garages of asset bloat and spares the assets that are currently, or will soon be, down and unavailable for use.If you're interested in learning more about how Utilimarc can help you rightsize your fleet or what a full rightsizing analysis entails, schedule a demo with a member of our team.