1.1 About Zonar Logs
Starting from 18th December 2017, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has come up with a new regulation, making the use of ELD mandatory for truckers to keep track of their hours of service. On top of that, this helps to deter exhausted drivers from driving on the road which helps to reduce accidents rates. According to the Zonar website, Zonar’s Hours of Service is a product introduced by Zonar Logs Comprehensive ELD Solution provides electronic logging and reports the hours of service with an additional ability to inform drivers on the violation, which in turns safeguards the driver’s well-being while driving on the road. This application is powered by a tablet mounted on the dashboard of the vehicle. This allows drivers to easily view the available hours without touching the device, updating of duty status and tracking of travelling time. Furthermore, drivers are given an alternative of viewing these data through a protected web-based application which is accessible from different workstations with an “Internet-enabled device”, thus, enabling drivers to constantly stay connected anywhere through the usage of the website.
1.2 Features of Zonar Logs
In addition, Zonar provides additional safeguarding of the driver’s well-being through aiding the drivers in terms of notifying them regarding any pending violations by sending notifications to the driver’s smartphones. These notifications will be sent repetitively at the 30 minute and 5-minute mark before the violation. This eases the drivers concerns about any traffic violations and payment of fines. Furthermore, Zonar Log has an advance maintenance system, that is called, “Tag Once, Inspect Regularly, Know Always” which is known as a visual inspection system. The driver carrying out the checks has to scan each tag on the vehicle. This helps to ensure that checks were done regularly and the vehicle is fully serviceable. This system helps drivers to transfer their findings during regular check-ups and ensuring that the system is updated and ready for usage. As a result, repairs can be easily managed due to the regular checks which boosts the time for vehicles on the road, thus, increasing work productivity and preventing any unforeseen circumstances from happening such as vehicle breakdown.
1.3 Cons of Zonar Logs
However, even with these functions and features, the Zonar’s Hours of Service lacks sufficient safety and security measures. In terms of its security measures, the system requires a driver to login and gain access to their data through the tablet. Even with those features in place, it does not have any theft protection measure, such as vehicle hijacking or stealing of driver’s personal belongings. This may severely impact the operations of the company, resulting in delay of delivery and possibly a loss of financial gains for both parties. Moreover, this protection measure need not incur significant cost as it can be improvised with the current Global Positioning System (GPS) feature and hardware that Zonar Log offers.
Due to inadequate features offered by Zonar’s Hours of Service, customers may turn to other products instead and thus, Zonar Logs may lose out to other competitors. According to Maddox (2015), a website from Tech Pro Research's on a survey (“How important is innovation”, March 2015), out of 353 respondents, 71% of them responded that innovation is ‘very important’. Hence, it is crucial that Zonar keeps innovating and improving on their products to stay competitive to receive new and loyal customers.
2. Problem Statement
Logistics and public transport companies who are using Electronic Logging Device (ELD) are moving into online platforms that allows drivers and the operations teams to view driver logs, update duty status and submit service records. However, these features are insufficient to meet drivers’ needs, in terms of its safety and security measures. With the aim of enhancing the safety and security measures; Zonar, the innovator of ELD, should integrate these measures in one device with its current features and hardware still intact.
3. Purpose Statement
The purpose of the report is to propose add-on features to Zonar Logs development team for the Electrical Logging Device (ELD) to further enhance the safety and security features of the product.
4. Solution
On top of the existing features that Zonar Logs currently offers, the team would like to propose the implementation of GPS tracking function, together with an improvement on how Zonar Logs can better monitor and transmit a vehicle’s vitals with its current advance maintenance system. This makes the product an ‘all in one’ product, allowing fleet managers and drivers to perform several tasks within a single platform, without the need of having several devices to achieve the same goal.
According to KeepTruckin (2017), keeping track of fleet locations plays an important role in fleet management. The access to this information would allow fleet managers to ensure that deliveries are made on time, indirectly improving the customer services provided to the customers. In addition, fleet managers can also make sure that the respective drivers are safe and operating on the assigned routes. The transparency achieved through this modification helps to reduce the time spent on looking for a particular vehicle, as well as improving the overall situational awareness, allowing for significant improvement in the field of route optimization and driver utilization.
Although Zonar Logs has its own advance maintenance system, the downside is that it still requires manpower to physically scan the tag located on each vehicle. By tapping on to the ELD’s ability to record and transmit log information, the additional transmission of vehicle health and data can simplify and reduce the administrative duties for fleet managers, allowing their expertise to be applied on to other important tasks.
The proposed solutions can help to improve overall efficiency and productivity of an operation, yet reducing the variable costs and administrative tasks required. As cited in Teletrac Navman as cited in Birkland(2017) , fleet managers prefer to manage the fleet and operations through a single platform, as compared to managing multiple platform. The amount of data visibility a single platform can offer enables the fleet managers to improve by making effective decisions that helps to reduce costs.
5. Benefit
With an upgraded product of Zonar Logs, users can enjoy more features in a single device and at a lower cost. Moreover, this not only benefits the users, it also benefits the company as they can reduce customers turnover rate which in turn improves customers’ satisfaction/morale. Hence, incorporating new features into the product is more useful as compared to making a new product.
6. Evaluation
Although the proposed solutions have its benefits, one of its drawbacks include a modification to the product architecture to support the additional features. Not to mention that there might also be a slight increase in cost due to upgrades in components and software in the device, which may impact the manufacturing cost of the product. Although the current device has the capability to provide GPS information, an additional tracking device might be required to make real-time tracking a reality. As for the improvement on the advance maintenance system, there shouldn’t be a need for additional hardware as it is able to tap into the current hardware that the device offers with minor amendments in the software as the original ELD device has the capability to store and transmit information. In addition, these amendments might also lead to an increase in the bugs present in the software, which might require a period of time to resolve them. However, the benefits of the proposed solution outweigh the drawbacks of the product implementation process.
7. Methods
Our research covers the product’s general information of Zonar Logs’ Electronic Data Logging (ELD) such as its current features and customers’ reviews to identify its current limitations. Next, we will research on specific solutions to locate key features to incorporate into the current product. One research that we found was from Google Scholar where it explained the GPS functionality of Zonar Logs and how it came about. The GPS system that is placed in Zonar Logs enables the trucks to log in and out from the system to check the amount of hours that the drivers’ have been working. With this GPS, the Zonar Log requires the internet connection where it will automatically give the location of the where the driver is moving towards.
We mainly used sources from their official website as they provide a lot of information regarding their product which are very useful for our research. Other than that, we also used several search engines such as One Search and Google Scholar to get the resources.
8. Concluding statement
In conclusion, there are both pros and cons in terms of upgrading the Zonar Log’s Hours of Service. The pros would be the fact that it is made easier for supervisors to examine their driver’s work logs and their locations. Furthermore, this improvement does not only benefit the supervisors as the driver’s using Zonar Log have a better understanding and appreciation of the product after adding the additional the safety and security features. The security features are placed in order to prevent any stolen goods which give the drivers a sense of certainty that there is a support system given to them if anything happens. In addition, the safety features aid the drivers on the roads with the notifications from the Zonar Log. The cons would be the amount of time being spent on these improvement as there will be a significant change in the software system, however, we strongly believe that these upgrades will give Zonar a competitive edge as such a product will be the first to cater to the needs of all the users of Zonar Log.
** Secondary source APA
Teletrac Navman as cited in Birkland(2017)
References/Resources:
Zonar Logs Hours of Service ELD. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://www.zonarsystems.com/solutions/zlogs-hours-of-service/