The services include a new tyre management service, a pilot for advanced monitoring of truck components and an artificial intelligence project.
“New technologies for monitoring and analysing truck data in real-time are opening up exciting opportunities to predict failures more precisely and further into the future. It’s all part of our continuous effort to keep our customers’ trucks on the road,” says Markus Efraimsson, VP for uptime at Volvo Trucks.
The tyre management service measures tyre pressure and temperature in real time. The results can be monitored through an app, helping both the driver and fleet manager to identify slow punctures before unplanned stops occur. The service has been launched in Sweden and is rolling out to other European markets.
Volvo Trucks is also piloting a service for customers of its Gold R&M contract. The company is monitoring and analysing data from thousands of trucks in real time, aiming to predict component failures before they occur and smooth the service process for customers. When a potential problem is detected by a Volvo Truck monitoring centre, the customer’s local Volvo workshop is alerted, so that action can be taken.
“We’re looking at uptime from a customer perspective, so our focus is really to secure that the customer has no unplanned stops,” says Markus Efraimsson.
The truck maker is also introducing machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to enable it to learn more about truck performance in everyday use.
Advanced computer modelling and analytics is being used to identify hidden patterns to predict component failures far in advance – with the aim of making it more likely that the service or repair can be done during a scheduled service visit for maximum truck uptime.