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Rangr and the need for a holistic fuel management solution

Last updated on 
Fuel management to save costs
Photo by Gab Pili / Unsplash

Let's begin with understanding what a fuel management system is and why is it required. Followed by an overview of the various categories of these systems and then dive into where Rangr fits in and how it stands out in plugging the gaps in your fuel management activities.

What is a fuel management system?

Any industry that has diesel or petrol consuming units as part of their operations for example excavators, rock crushers, gensets, tippers, loaders etc. requires keeping track of their fuel stock, its consumption and all associated costs. The method of keeping track of fuel usage is called a fuel management system. The most basic system used to accomplish this is manually maintaining fuel logs in a logbook.

Problems faced by industries using manual system

Manually maintaining logs is a simple system, but creates many overheads with time. It depends on trusting manual inputs and assumes that there is no direct or indirect pilferage of fuel. Consolidation of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly fuel logs and then performing cost analysis with that data is a time consuming process in itself, and negatively affects the efficiency of overall operations. If there is direct or indirect fuel pilferage, it is extremely difficult to identify using the manual logs system.

Why do you need a digital fuel management system?

A digital fuel management system is required to overcome the pain points of a manual logbook type system. With the use of a digital fuel management system, all data related to fuel on a micro level of each unit becomes available in realtime, directly in your hands. As the decision makers of your industry, the big picture of fuel consumption on a macro level across your entire diverse fuel consuming units also becomes very clear, all in one place.

Having the macro level, big picture in your hands provides for planning your fuel inventory in an efficient and smart way. Having access to fuel data at the micro level of each unit helps in identifying problem units and uncovering direct or indirect fuel pilferage. Consequently appropriate corrective measures can be taken in a timely fashion. Having access to historical data allows you to analyse the trends of fuel consumption, which again facilitates better planning and usage. All measures on the macro level, micro level and historical data trends, in turn result in significant savings in fuel associated costs every day, week and month.

Types of digital fuel management systems

Digital fuel management systems can be segregated into the following broad categories:

Dispenser side systems

These systems provide for control on fuel dispensing and employ technologies like smart pumps and RFID based authorization mechanisms. Solutions by ReTrack Automation, Hectronic, Repos Energy etc. provide extensive systems in this category.

The fuel received by the dispensing side is recorded with the help of flow meters and/or ATG/LLS fuel level sensors. These systems provide further control and automation of fuel dispensing by employing technologies like smart pumps and RFID based authorization mechanisms

Fuel consuming unit side systems

These systems provide for monitoring the fuel-in-tank and many other parameters of the fuel consuming unit and employ technologies like fuel level sensors coupled with GPS and data analysis. Since the fuel tank and other available parameters such as speed, location, working / not working etc. parameters of the fuel consuming unit are being monitored directly, these systems make it possible to get deeper insights on fuel consumption patterns that eventually help in formulating strategies applicable at the micro level.  

Many OEMs provide fuel monitoring systems in this category. For example Tata FleetEdge, JCB LiveLink etc.  Although, even with these systems in place, you may still not have the big picture if you have a diverse fleet or a fleet that consists of older vehicles and machinery. Consolidation of data from different providers will still remain an unaddressed issue for you as the consumer.

Other providers of fuel monitoring / fleet management systems

  1. FleetX
  2. TrackNerd
  3. LocoNav
  4. Wialon
  5. Omnicomm
  6. Vamosys

These systems could be good in specific use cases, but have the following drawbacks:

  1. Most solutions are specific to the logistics sector, and may not be applicable directly in the industrial scenario.
  2. More micro level details or “telematics”, and lesser macro level details, which ultimately ends up requiring additional work on your side to build the big picture.
  3. Many cases require specialisation to use, which defeats the purpose of a digital fuel management system - to make things simple and easy.
  4. Lack of meaningful analytics. Most solutions’ data serves well for historical look up / “reporting” purposes, but cannot necessarily be used directly in the operations optimisation process.
  5. Lack of tools to analyse and manually intervene on individual fuel events, to ascertain and differentiate between true and false positives.
  6. Lack of in-house data analysis engine. Some of the above mentioned providers only expose data and reports from a 3rd party, without being transparent about it.
  7. Lack of data analysis engine capable of micro level adjustments.
  8. Lack of direct access to the team, in order to tailor to your needs and requirements which can change over time.
Process and billing management side systems

These systems cover for management of fuel related processes and billing automation, which are not directly addressed by any of the above dispensing side solutions or fuel consuming unit side solutions. Orangecells Logbook is an example.

Where does Rangr fit in and what is different about it?

Orangecells Rangr is a fuel management solution providing realtime monitoring, in-depth reports, analysis and analytics in two of the above categories -

  • Dispenser side: fuel received by dispensing unit (or fuel going out of it)
  • Fuel consuming unit side: fuel received, consumed and/or taken out of the unit

Rangr builds the big picture for you, closing the gaps in your fuel management activities. We partner with various dispensing side solution providers to make a complete and robust solution to address all your needs.  

We at Orangecells Innovation Lab deeply understand the problems posed by OEM provided systems as well as the issues involved with using some of the above mentioned systems by other providers. We built Rangr based on first-hand inputs from users of these systems, with a holistic approach to address most of the above problems, and a goal to equip you with the best solution to make your decisions in the least amount of time and effort.

In the articles to follow, we will dive into the details of how the Rangr fuel management solution works, how it addresses the problems listed above and why it is the best-in-category solution for your needs.