Developing Fully Fledged Fleet Tire Management Software

Business challenge

Our client, a global mobility company delivering trusted tires and services, has started working on an innovative system for improving fleet maintenance and providing historical and predictive analytics based on unique algorithms and machine learning. When they started working with Intellias, the company was actively piloting an early version of the platform and warming up interest in it among leading logistics companies.

The need for a professional technology partner became obvious as soon as they needed to take this solution to the next level. Intellias directly engaged with the client’s innovation centers in the US and the EU and got involved in all phases of product development. Our team has covered design and ideation, development, consulting, quality assurance, product documentation, and playbooks.

Solution delivered

Our client started with a simple solution to collect data from sensors in tires and transfer it to a user interface. The project began more like a proof of concept (POC) developed by the in-house team. The Intellias team joined the project at the early stages and helped deliver a successfully running minimum viable product (MVP). After deploying the MVP, the joint team decided to develop a microservices-based platform and turn the small MVP into fully fledged fleet tire management software. Intellias experts, including several solution architects, stayed as dedicated software development professionals to share best practices, offer secure and scalable solutions, and provide expert consulting on the company’s digitalization strategy.

The new platform was targeted to provide all the advantages of a fleet management solution: optimize logistics and supply chain management, reduce documentation processes, speed up the workflow, and maximize tire management program efficiency. The fleet management software had to serve two types of customers with a single unified platform: large commercial fleets that consist mainly of trucks and trailers along with small courier and delivery companies using light commercial vehicles.

The custom solution is simple and elegant. A vehicle’s sensors and devices collect data about tire pressure, leaks, damage, etc. This collected data gets transferred to the cloud, where it is transformed to a more readable version and aggregated in cloud and API written on .NET. Later, these APIs transfer the data to the front end so the operator of a fleet management solution can access reports, data, and options to manage or assign fleets.

The developer team managed to build a unified API widely used across all product features. It helps maintain consistency in analytics, reporting, email alerts, and more.

The developed data platform covers features such as:

• Fleet and vehicle management
• Vehicle geolocation
• Geofencing
• Email alerting
• PDF and XLSX reports
• Report subscriptions
• Real-time and historical dashboard analytics

Building this fleet management software involved developing a system to interact with Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) devices (which are Telematic Control Units, or TCUs) through over-the-air (OTA) communication. This system provides a web user interface with a pre-defined set of commands to configure the devices and was designed for our client’s internal use, specifically for hardware engineers.

Business outcome

Intellias helped the client grow a small idea into a fully-fledged fleet management system. The data platform we built together provides fleet managers with a set of essential features for effective tire management.

The dashboard shows charts with advanced options to analyze the health of vehicles within a given area of responsibility. A Geofence feature allows for receiving immediate information about vehicles entering or leaving a defined area. Daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports provide aggregated information regarding vehicles. An operator can manage company tires or upload information manually through the Fleets feature. Another big benefit of the platform is the alerts system that immediately notifies the fleet manager about any change in parameter values and warns of yellow or red risk zones, indicating a tire rupture or leak.

Intellias is working closely with the client, applying a cloud-native approach, implementing an effective backend architecture, and contributing to developing a solution designed to improve fleet maintenance at its core. The developed platform has become a vital part of our client’s digitalization strategy and has helped strengthen our client’s position as a premium global brand.