American Electric Power (AEL)

Challenges
American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest power companies in the United States, wanted to improve worker safety and reaction time to dangerous incidents, shorten the duration of customer outages, and reduce gas usage for their 4500-vehicle service fleet that serve eleven states. To do this they needed a mobile fleet management system that could display real-time vehicle location information, differentiate vehicle types on dispatchers' maps, provide in-vehicle directional prompts, and generate vehicle data reports to help better distribute crews based on job demands.

Solution
AEP implemented Mentor Streets® Enterprise, a mobile resource management solution with Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)/GPS, mobile computing, telematic data, event management, and reporting capabilities. They also outfitted their vehicles with Mentor's BBX, a stand-alone GPS/AVL and telematic data collection device. Streets Enterprise captures data sent by BBX and displays vehicle icons on the dispatchers' existing maps. The movement of the vehicles on the map coincides with the movement of trucks in the field. Streets Enterprise also integrates with AEP's Orbital database to collect data such as vehicle speed and the last known position of the vehicle to monitor driver behavior. Mentor's XGate® middleware facilitates the transfer of vehicle location information and data to the office, while XMobile Manager® (XMM) tracks, programs, and updates BBX over the air.

Results
Since implementing the system, call takers can now see which vehicle is closest to an incident when a call for service is received, and dispatch the closest available worker immediately. This results in reduced fuel and overtime costs. In the case of a driver emergency, a dispatcher can determine the exact location of the vehicle in seconds and send help immediately. In addition, the system's ability to generate reports based on historical events allows dispatchers to see what resources are being used, and where and why they are being used, to minimize downtime and save money