Smart Trucks From Toyota

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Toyota Material handling and the warehouse trucks that they are now offering or if you happen to have a fleet of older Toyota trucks and haven’t kept up with new innovations, guess what? Since as early as October 2018 Toyota Material Handling has been offering smart trucks.

These trucks are integrated with telematics technology that assists a fleet manager to improve logistics, assure safety, and provide all sorts of real-time information that will help warehouse businesses achieve a leaner, more productive operation.

Smart truck features are standard in the newest Toyota trucks and allow a warehouse and/or a fleet manger to know running hours to better utilize service and rental data and even generate mobile service requests.

The ability to actually know the amount of hours a truck has been used can assist a warehouse and/or fleet manager to schedule maintenance exactly when the trunk needs it. This avoids waste in service time and costs and maximizes uptime. With the smart truck, you can book maintenance with your service team through the app.

The system provides access to a web portal and overviews all smart trucks on site. You see in real time data relating to maters running, fleet number, service and rental contract.

The ability to monitor truck use allows you to customize service intervals and that results in the longevity of the truck’s lifecycle.

The foundation of Toyota smart trucks technology is I_Site

I_Site

Toyota smart trucks are designed to easily integrated into I_Site, Toyota’s fleet management system. Just one click on a computer activates the technology to monitor all aspects of your fleet’s operation. It gathers data so that a fleet manager can make wise decisions concerning any issue that might arise concerning a truck. It generates detailed reports to help you make the right decisions.

Toyota actually developed I_Site more than 19 years ago and has put about 70,000 forklifts online. The system’s hardware includes telematics products and onboard sensors. This connects every one of the trucks in your fleet to your office through an ERP system and works through the Toyota back office systems.

I_Site comes with an assortment of features including:

• Truck and driver utilization
• A web portal and mobile app
• Report subscription and analysis charts
• Battery monitoring
• Shock sensors and lockout, shock notifications, and supervisor lockout notification
• Remote driver access, driver administration and license control
• Contract monitoring
• Pre-operational checks including notifications
• Smart access by card or fob

There are also features that assist in ensuring the best maintenance of your fleet of trucks as possible. These features include:

• The ability to get in direct contact with Toyota’s service team
• Sending a service request message from your mobile device
• The ability to add an image and specific message to the service request
• The ability to quickly and easily reduce downtime and improve productivity

I_Site can be used to connect your business with the help of telematics units and additional sensor, more onboard sensors, and service reports from field engineers.

All information can be captured through a web portal that links to your laptop or mobile device.

Moreover, the system can be upgraded without the need of adding more hardware. Options that are available for upgrade include a pre-operational check that prevents the truck from starting until there has been a complete safety check by the driver. A smart access lets authorized drivers start a truck using their existing badge. Also included in the upgrade is MyFleet package that summarizes reports concerning machine performance based on telematics and Toyota internal systems.

Benefits Of Smart Trucks

There are a plethora of advantages to using smart trucks. It raises productivity by improving machine utilization, improving driver performance, and offering smart benchmarks.

Bet you didn’t know that the average utilization level of a forklift is only about 33 percent. So there is wasted time of as much as 65 percent. This waste can be eliminated through the I_Site system.

If you don’t use telematics monitoring systems, then how well your fleet of forklift drivers have been trained could be difficult to determine. Moreover, it is essential for a fleet manager or/and warehouse manager to know when the drive of a forklift should be re-trained. All of this is easy to monitor with I_Site.

If your distribution chain related business has a number of sites, it can be difficult to keep track of all the activity. With smart benchmarking, a feature of I_Site, assessing and comparing truck performance over a number of sites can be achieved.

I_Site can also assist a fleet manager and/or warehouse manager to improve safety. The system controls the speed of smart trucks and reduces the possibility of accidents.

The shock-monitoring feature of the system senses impacts smart trucks experience as well as when and where the impact occurred and the speed of the lift when the impact occurred. Knowing this you can take action to ensure that the accidents won’t happen again. After sensing an impact, the system puts the truck into a creeping speed until authorized personnel can reset it.

In addition, the system helps to ensure machine and battery lifetime. I_Site analyses the operation of a forklift to improve its operational efficiency and helps to extend the lifetime of a fleet as well as the lifetime of the batteries that power the fleet.

Finally, I_Site helps to reduce costs including operational, damage and insurance costs.

(Sources: Smart Trucks and I Site)