Download PDF
Kairos: Providing Reliable, Realtime Information to Quickly and Easily Track School Buses
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Cellular
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Human Resources
Use Cases
- Vehicle Telematics
- Fleet Management
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Kairos, a company founded by several bus companies in response to serious cost pressure on French school bus operators, was looking for a solution to provide efficient fleet management at a low cost. The company faced substantial cost pressures as they had to work with minimal operating margins due to government funding. Most fleet management solutions were not tailored to meet the specific demands of school bus operators – they were often too expensive and too complicated, thereby counterproductive to cost efficiency. Kairos was looking for a solution that could provide real-time bus tracking for full control over the fleet, effortless driver wage management, and flexibility and adaptability to the needs of fleet managers.
About The Customer
Kairos is a company that provides school bus operators with efficient fleet management at a low cost. The company was founded by several bus companies in response to serious cost pressure on French school bus operators. The name Kairos is derived from the Greek god who personified opportunity, luck, and favourable moments, reflecting the company's commitment to efficient school bus operations. The company operates in 16 countries, serving over 20 bus companies with more than 3,500 connected devices. Kairos aims to provide reliable and safe service while keeping costs as low as possible.
The Solution
Kairos partnered with EMnify for their fleet management solution. EMnify met their number one requirement: reliable cellular connectivity. For the Kairos solution to work, the device on board the bus must reliably communicate with the central infrastructure for real-time management and monitoring to work. EMnify works across borders, which is essential for bus operators working across borders to not lose signal or inflate expenses with additional roaming costs. The EMnify SIM automatically finds the best network wherever the vehicle is at any given point in time. EMnify also offers flexibility, allowing operators to choose the package that fits their needs. It allows for total cost control and stable connectivity costs through tailor-made packages and usage limits. The existence of an API was a key factor in Kairos’s decision to choose EMnify as their partner. The EMnify API makes it easy to scale as the user base grows and functionalities are continuously expanded.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airport SCADA Systems Improve Service Levels
Modern airports are one of the busiest environments on Earth and rely on process automation equipment to ensure service operators achieve their KPIs. Increasingly airport SCADA systems are being used to control all aspects of the operation and associated facilities. This is because unplanned system downtime can cost dearly, both in terms of reduced revenues and the associated loss of customer satisfaction due to inevitable travel inconvenience and disruption.
Case Study
IoT-based Fleet Intelligence Innovation
Speed to market is precious for DRVR, a rapidly growing start-up company. With a business model dependent on reliable mobile data, managers were spending their lives trying to negotiate data roaming deals with mobile network operators in different countries. And, even then, service quality was a constant concern.
Case Study
Digitize Railway with Deutsche Bahn
To reduce maintenance costs and delay-causing failures for Deutsche Bahn. They need manual measurements by a position measurement system based on custom-made MEMS sensor clusters, which allow autonomous and continuous monitoring with wireless data transmission and long battery. They were looking for data pre-processing solution in the sensor and machine learning algorithms in the cloud so as to detect critical wear.
Case Study
Cold Chain Transportation and Refrigerated Fleet Management System
1) Create a digital connected transportation solution to retrofit cold chain trailers with real-time tracking and controls. 2) Prevent multi-million dollar losses due to theft or spoilage. 3) Deliver a digital chain-of-custody solution for door to door load monitoring and security. 4) Provide a trusted multi-fleet solution in a single application with granular data and access controls.
Case Study
Vehicle Fleet Analytics
Organizations frequently implement a maintenance strategy for their fleets of vehicles using a combination of time and usage based maintenance schedules. While effective as a whole, time and usage based schedules do not take into account driving patterns, environmental factors, and sensors currently deployed within the vehicle measuring crank voltage, ignition voltage, and acceleration, all of which have a significant influence on the overall health of the vehicle.In a typical fleet, a large percentage of road calls are related to electrical failure, with battery failure being a common cause. Battery failures result in unmet service agreement levels and costly re-adjustment of scheduled to provide replacement vehicles. To reduce the impact of unplanned maintenance, the transportation logistics company was interested in a trial of C3 Vehicle Fleet Analytics.
Case Study
3M Gains Real-Time Insight with Cloud Solution
The company has a long track record of innovative technology solutions. For example, 3M helps its customers optimize parking operations by automating fee collection and other processes. To improve support for this rapidly expanding segment, 3M needed to automate its own data collection and reporting. The company had recently purchased the assets of parking, tolling, and automatic license plate reader businesses, and required better insight into these acquisitions. Chad Reed, Global Business Manager for 3M Parking Systems, says, “With thousands of installations across the world, we couldn’t keep track of our software and hardware deployments, which made it difficult to understand our market penetration.” 3M wanted a tracking application that sales staff could use to get real-time information about the type and location of 3M products in parking lots and garages. So that it could be used on-site with potential customers, the solution would have to provide access to data anytime, anywhere, and from an array of mobile devices. Jason Fox, Mobile Application Architect at 3M, upped the ante by volunteering to deliver the new app in one weekend. For Fox and his team, these requirements meant turning to the cloud instead of an on-premises datacenter. “My first thought was to go directly to the cloud because we needed to provide access not only to our salespeople, but to resellers who didn’t have access to our internal network,” says Fox. “The cloud just seemed like a logical choice.”