Howdens Joinery chooses fleet performance and journey management from Microlise

Howdens Joinery has opted for telematics provider Microlise following a successful trial.

The company, which supplies more than 400,000 kitchens each year to UK homes, is implementing Microlise’s fleet performance and journey management modules.

The fleet performance module will allow Howdens to understand how economically and safely their vehicles are being driven in order to provide targeted driver feedback and training with the goal of improving fuel economy and reducing accidents.

The journey management module enables vehicles to be tracked against delivery schedules in order to provide enhanced customer service information.

In taking the decision to use the Microlise solution, Howdens trialled the fleet performance module. Initially, a 12 week trial was planned but Howdens chose to team up with Microlise after only eight weeks. During that time the system had helped deliver a 5.44% improvement in fuel economy across the two trial sites.

Microlise has now completed the roll out of the fleet performance module to 104 delivery vehicles across six sites (some of these sites are DHL sites who run part of Howdens distribution operation).

In addition to Microlise’s MTU3 telematics unit, which reports on the location of the vehicle and driving style information via a direct connection to the vehicle’s CANBus, Microlise is implementing the new DCM4 driver communications module and panic buttons.

The DCM4 will provide Howdens’ drivers with voice calls and driver phone book, two-way messaging and task management, with the objective of reducing call costs and making the exchange of information between the driver and traffic office more streamlined and effective.

The journey management module will be implemented as a third phase in the project, whereupon the DCM4 will also be used to convey schedule and delivery information to the driver.

Microlise is also providing Howdens with a consultancy service to ensure the system is perfectly embedded within Howden’s day to day operation and the company gets the maximum amount of benefit from the solution.

This service typically takes the form of monthly analysis, site visits and calls to ensure everyone is happy with the system and its operational usage.