INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS Getting Connected
BLUE BIRD, SYNOVIA PARTNER TO BRING FACTORY-INSTALLED GPS TO SCHOOL BUS CUSTOMERS WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY
Factory-installed GPS specifically for Blue Bird Vision and All American models aims to further reduce total cost of ownership.
GPS has been an aftermarket
fleet’s bottom line, it could only be installed as an after- market solution. Tat all changed following the NAPT Summit in Grand Rapids, Mich., this past fall. Trade show attendees were greeted with an industry first — a prototype of a school bus pre-wired with GPS direct from the factory. It’s the result of a partnership between Synovia Solutions and Blue Bird to further reduce the total cost of ownership. Tis fleet management solution comes at no upfront price increase for custom- ers, aside from normal monthly cellular charges through Verizon, Synovia’s data partner. Jeff Merten, Blue Bird’s executive director of global
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marketing, said pre-wiring GPS into buses at the plant cuts installation costs in half. “Total cost of ownership is big for us,” he added.
“Savings through GPS fleet management is pretty significant.”
NO LIMITATION OF DATA
Te program formally launched before Tanksgiving with a full training program provided to Blue Bird dealers at an annual meeting in Clearwater, Fla. For example, the GPS can be programed to communicate engine fault codes directly to the customer or to the local Blue Bird dealer. Tis, said Bill Westerman, Synovia’s vice president of sales and marketing, gives operators “a head’s up” on any issue with a particular bus, before it returns to the yard. “Te unique thing of having an OEM installation is
getting into the guts of the system,” added Phil Horlock, president and CEO of Blue Bird. “What we were looking at doing is getting right into the heart of the vehicle.”
22 School Transportation News January 2014
hile GPS has saturated about a third of the school buses currently on the road, and the technology is one of the most often cited as positively impacting a
option available to school buses for more than a decade, but installing af- ter the rubber meets the road means limitations in the type of data that can be captured, explained Wester- man. Tat changes when GPS is fully integrated with the entire original vehicle manufacturing and engi- neering. Factory-installed GPS also meets all requirements for durability and factory specifications, he added. Westerman noted that Synovia has tuned its software to be “closely aligned” with the unique components of Blue Bird buses, such as the exact engine diagnostics and movement calibrations to provide the best possible data. “It provides information in real time to help districts understand when the bus arrives at stops or at school, when the stop arm is de- ployed, when the flashers go on, etc. Tere’s a lot of value in being able to track all of that,” he said. Te idea was first born at Blue
Bird a little more than a year ago as the bus manufacturer sought more differentiation in the GPS market- place. Synovia then answered the bell to provide the core of its GPS solu- tions to the engineers at Blue Bird to integrate directly into the Vision and All American models for tracking everything from engine idling time and fuel usage, to student tracking. “Te whole idea would be to find
someone who (Blue Bird) could work with, who’d be willing to have the system installed at the factory,” Westerman recalled. “It would be potentially a point of differentiation for Bird Bird, to provide a better solution for the customer, because ev- erything could be integrated as part
of the manufacturing process, not done in the field afterward.” Horlock added that the GPS
solution also provides feedback on driver performance as well as engine and vehicle performance, and offers increased safety for student tracking. It even records data from the child check system on the bus. Westerman explained that GPS
integration generally saves operators 10 to 15 percent per year by using data to show exactly how to lower operating costs. He said customers could quickly realize their return on investment (ROI) via the vehicle data reported, such as with fuel consumption. In a 100-bus operation, for example, he said a school district could realize $100,000 in savings by ordering its GPS direct from the factory. Meanwhile, Merten said orders for
the new buses were being taken as early as late October. Pre-wiring at the factory will begin in these large buses by next month, with customers having the option to receive their orders with GPS enabled, or they can decide to turn it on at a later date. He added that for the time being, GPS would continue to be an after- market option on Micro Bird small school buses. Customers can still opt for another GPS provider during the factory install, which Horlock and Mertens said would incur an addi- tional charge. “Te outcome of that product will
be different, as it won’t be able to tap into all of the diagnostics,” Horlock said. “It will offer less features, similar to what is already available in the aftermarket.”
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