Celloglas is the largest provider of decorative print finishing services to the British printing industry and runs a fleet of over 60 commercial vehicles. It chose the VL-Fleet tracking solution from VeriLocation to improve the efficiency of its fleet utilisation and to reduce costs.

VL-Fleet has enabled Celloglas to:

• Obtain detailed management information to optimise utilisation of its resources

• Improve scheduling and route planning to reduce time taken and fuel consumption

• React faster to customer requests by directing the nearest vehicle to the customer at short notice.

Celloglas has 15 sites throughout the UK and its principle clients are large print companies. They require a fast response service to collect jobs and deliver them back completed, sometimes within 12 hours. Peter Clayton, Finance Director of Celloglas Limited explains: “When I took over this position I wanted to gain a full understanding of the scale of the commercial vehicle fleet and the cost of running it, but I had very little data to work on.”

Detailed reporting

VeriLocation installed the VL-Fleet GPS tracking devices on over 60 vehicles in the Celloglas commercial fleet.

Peter continues: “With 15 sites across the UK the challenge is to use the vehicles more productively. With my input, VeriLocation adapted the reports so that I could analyse vehicle utilisation across the country in depth, understanding trips made and over what proportion of the working week these vehicles were being used productively.

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“Each site has its own territory. After tracking the vehicle trips routinely made, we can now more effectively plan the journeys and minimise any crossover between vehicles from different sites. Each van keeps to its own patch and the overall distance travelled is less – saving fuel and time.

Improved efficiency

“There were some initial cultural issues to overcome with the perception by drivers of ‘Big Brother’ checking up on them. The use of VL-Fleet has however helped to exert some constructive peer pressure and generate the same ethos of improving efficiency as we are promoting in other parts of the business.

“It is becoming an immensely useful tool and we have evidence that typical rounds are being completed in less time. Not only does this help to reduce fuel costs and overtime, it may help us to cut some of our overheads by rationalising our vehicle fleet.”

Better customer service

Production planners also find the system very helpful on a day-to-day basis. They have real-time information on the vans – their location, direction and speed of travel. This means that the planners can more accurately inform customers of delivery times or contact the nearest driver to a customer when a new job needs collecting. Peter adds: “VL-Fleet is easy to use, quite intuitive, and easy to maintain when changing vehicles or drivers.”

Peter concludes: “It is too early for me to be able to quantify the complete cost benefit of VL-Fleet, but at less than £1 per day per vehicle I am confident it will in time make a return. I’ve found VeriLocation very co-operative to work with and I now have a wealth of information to analyse. We are continually gaining a clearer picture of the fleet.”