Utilimarc is proud to share the successful results of their rightsizing initiative for the utilities company, American Electric Power. With a fleet of over 8,000 vehicles and 5,000 other trailers and equipment, understanding how many assets AEP needed to efficiently meet demand was one of the major problems addressed with the integration of Utilimarc’s Business Intelligence Platform.
“We needed to tackle vehicle usage first – and cost reduction strategies are quick to follow,” said AEP Strategic Initiatives Lead Derek Ash. “Utilimarc helps us see where we’re at, where we’d like to go and avoid bad decisions [like removing excess vehicles] that would cost us more than it would save.”
As with many large, widespread fleets, it can be tricky to balance between rightsizing assets to save on costs and the natural urge to overextend for the feeling of security. Using AEP’s usage, maintenance and cost data, Utilimarc’s BI Platform was able to identify which vehicles were underutilized and no longer needed. Alternatively, the fleet could use this recommendation to reposition underutilized vehicles for higher efficiency.
The rightsizing analysis was completed on a selection of 3,000 heavy-duty vehicles from AEP’s total asset count of 13,000. It took into consideration the fleet’s utilization throughout the calendar year to understand the peaks and valleys in vehicle usage, which helped to pinpoint the “bloat” in the fleet’s asset count.
By bringing data in from multiple siloed sources, Utilimarc’s BI platform was able to offer AEP insights broken down by each department identifying which vehicles are critical to fleet operation and which they could afford to release. Alternatively, the fleet could use this recommendation to reposition underutilized vehicles for higher efficiency. Overall, these kinds of insights are key in reducing fleet costs, reducing waste and increasing fleet efficiency.
