Coates’ current focus and investment on telemetry and other data-enabling technologies is having a significant impact for many of its industrial customers. In fact, the company’s growing telematics offering is already helping one major mining sector customer save 9.1% on their average monthly equipment hire spend.
Here’s why Coates is investing in telematics, and how it can help to cut hire equipment costs and improve the efficiency of your next shutdown.
Telematics allow customers to develop a better understanding of where their hire equipment is and how it’s being used. This knowledge then becomes a powerful tool for reducing equipment waste, driving more efficient equipment use and encouraging better hire behaviours during major industrial events.
Coates is currently making a significant investment into technologies and platforms to give customers greater access to data-driven insights just like these. According to Jeff Allen, Coates National Industrial Services Manager, some current initiatives include:
A major retrofit project to add telemetry devices to Coates’ mobile fleet
The launch of new proprietary asset management technology, SiteIQ
“We want to work with our clients to help them achieve greater efficiency,” Jeff explains. “Helping customers to reduce equipment costs and enhance productivity is a good basis for building better long-term relationships, and it helps customers to see the value in partnering with us again.”
Joshua Tompkins, Coates Industrial IoT Product Owner, believes two important factors drive equipment efficiency during shutdowns. “Industrial customers want to be able to do more work with less hired equipment., To achieve this, they need to know where their hire equipment is and whether it is being used effectively enough to justify the cost of hiring it,” Joshua explains. “Our telematics solutions provide considerable value by giving customers easy access to this data to make informed decisions.”
The main benefit of fleet location data is that it gives customers visibility to where their equipment is on site, reducing wasted equipment and preventing over hiring. “Telemetry allows lost and misplaced equipment to be quickly and easily found, and either taken off hire or re-allocated to other operators,” says Joshua. But while location data is important for delivering cost-effective shutdowns, Joshua argues that simply knowing where an asset is doesn’t always mean that it is being used effectively.
“Utilisation data is where the real value of telematics comes in,” Joshua continues. “It offers that additional layer of information that can help customers to reduce the overall cost of hire equipment, to drive more efficient use of the equipment customers do have on hire, and to encourage better site-wide hire behaviours.”
The misuse of popular hire equipment like welders provides a good example of where efficiencies can be gained. “When welders are used in place of a small generator, it causes unnecessary wear on the equipment. Welders are also high-cost items compared to a suitable generator, which would be a far more efficient power source on site,” Joshua explains.
Lighting towers are also ripe for achieving telemetry-enabled efficiency. “Often customers forget to use the timers on lighting towers, which leaves them running throughout the day. The use of telematics data allows this inefficiency to be identified and managed,” says Joshua. “In terms of efficiencies, these changes might seem small, but when equipment is used efficiently the customer gains can really add up over time. Just think of the drops that fill buckets that fill swimming pools.”
Effective planning plays a critical role in the successful delivery of major industrial shutdowns and maintenance events. When telematics solutions are effectively deployed, they can bring valuable insight to this process. “These are typically large events that require a lot of labour and machinery,” says Jeff. “Telematics data gives customers the opportunity to take some of the lessons learned and efficiencies gained from previous events and apply them to improve the planning and forecasting of future events.”
Having access to data from vast customer events across industry also positions Coates to apply these learnings to support new industrial customers. “Most customers have a reasonable idea of their requirements, but we can draw on our data and experience to provide further insight, and to help customers identify any equipment gaps and hidden costs that other providers may price in at a later stage.”
As different customers have different support requirements, Coates is designing its telematics solutions to be easily scaled up and down according to customer needs. “Some of our larger customers are now building their own data platforms to harness a growing pool of information, so we can provide equipment data in the required format for these customers,” says Jeff. “Other customers benefit from the oversight and assurance of our managed service approach, knowing that a dedicated data analyst is continuously looking at hire equipment data to find new efficiencies.”
Planning an industrial event? Coates can connect you with data and insights to inform and enhance your next project. Connect with our Industrial Solutions team today to find out more.
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