Automating Fleet Inspections with AI - How to and Benefits

Managing large vehicle fleets can be a very tiring and time-consuming process involving various mandatory steps needed to ensure the safety of the vehicles the company owns.

A Fleet Manager, when checking the vehicle's health, will have to

• Keep close track of the vehicle's age and how many miles it has been driven
• Ensure that vehicles get serviced on time for proper functioning
• Constantly check for damages and facilitate repairs to avoid any major accidents
• Keep records of the vehicle's health, which could be needed to run investigations in the future
• Be informed about when a vehicle needs to be repaired vs. replaced

Keeping track of this much information and managing all the paperwork manually can be very tiring for a human.

That's where Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Automation can help.

In this blog, we will talk about the different challenges that Fleet Managers are facing in today's date, and how Inspektlabs' AI vehicle Inspection solution can help solve these problems.

Let's dive in.

Understanding the challenges of Fleet Management

First, let's begin by understanding the challenges involved in the traditional Fleet Management process.

As a Fleet Manager taking care of bigger vehicle fleets, you deal with

• Infinite paperwork to be maintained individually for each vehicle.
• Wasted time and effort on individually inspecting each vehicle manually.
• Getting lost in records from months ago while having to look for a vehicle's damage history
• Different vehicles require different inspection methods, which are challenging for one person to remember.
• Errors in the report due to subjectivity while inspecting the vehicle.
• Planning services efficiently and knowing when they need to be repaired or replaced.

All these problems are brewing because this process is done manually and fully relies on the human effort going into it.

However, with the current advancements in AI, Machine Learning, and Automation, this process can easily be delegated to computers and standardized quickly, saving the time and effort for Fleet Managers to focus on more critical tasks.

How Inspektlabs can help you solve these problems

Inspektlabs' Fleet Management solution, built using a powerful AI model, is made to help Fleet Managers in their day-to-day operations.

Some of the key features that help a Fleet Manager work more efficiently include

• Using the Website dashboard to track information like the vehicle's make and model, VIN, registration number, odometer reading, damage history etc., all in one place, i.e. no more fishing through tons of paperwork.

• Vehicle Inspections can be delegated to AI, cutting down on manual effort, and reducing the time taken to generate reports from days to a few minutes.
• Inspektlabs' AI model can detect damage to 160+ vehicle parts on all types of vehicles, making it a great "one-solution-for-all" tool.

• Improved accuracy (90%-95%) with a more streamlined framework to maintain standardization.

• Get automated repair vs. replacement decisions, repairable vs. total loss calculations etc. that can help you make more informed decisions about the vehicle.

Exploring Fleet Inspections in different industries

Fleet Inspection as a process is a mandatory step for companies across many industries, such as

1. A Logistics/Delivery business to keep track of their vehicle health
2. Car Rentals & Leasing companies where vehicles frequently keep going in and out of the facility
3. Car Dealerships using multiple vehicles to facilitate test drives for customers
4. Ride-Hailing/Taxi companies that have multiple vehicles functioning on the road
5. Corporate fleets, where companies own a large number of vehicles for different processes.

However, each industry's challenges might not be 100% similar (what you see at a Car Rental might not be the same for a Car Dealership using test drive cars).

Let's talk about these challenges in detail and see how Inspektlabs can solve these challenges.

Logistics/Delivery services

Challenges faced -

• Drivers are not trained to carry out detailed inspections and might generate inaccurate reports.
• They might also try to hide damages in order to not take the blame on themselves.
• Fleet managers are swamped with work since they have to ensure each vehicle is individually inspected.
• Since manual inspections are not standardized, it will result in a lot of inconsistencies in the inspection process.

How Inspektlabs solves this problem -

• Inspektlabs AI (trained on 30M+ images/videos of vehicle damage) enables anyone to become an expert inspector without any training required.
• The AI model comes pre-built with some fraud detection measures and will easily identify attempts to hide damages on the vehicle.
• The fleet manager's stress is reduced because they can now delegate this work to the drivers and free up some bandwidth for themselves in the process.
• Inspektlabs AI will also help standardize the process and give you more consistent inspection reports.

Car Rental and Leasing companies

Challenges faced -

• Customers prefer a transparent process where they get a view of the status of every step during the inspection process.
• They also look for a shorter wait time for the inspection process before picking it up and after dropping the vehicle.
• There are also instances where customers try to cheat the car rental company by hiding damages to avoid paying for repairs while returning the vehicle.
• If an inspection is done poorly, it could result in fatalities for the customer who is driving the vehicle.

How Inspektlabs solves this problem -

• Inspektlabs' vehicle inspection solution makes it easier for the company to share reports and vehicle status with the customer, giving them full transparency of the process.
• Automated inspections also help speed up the process, cutting down time from a few hours to a few minutes.
• Pre-rental and post-rental inspections are infinitely easier thanks to Inspektlabs' vehicle inspection solution. They also come pre-built with a ton of fraud detection measures (such as hiding damage, vehicle switching etc.) to avoid any chances of falsifying reports.
• Inspektlabs' damage detection model provides reports with 90%-95% accuracy while ensuring that all the crucial information is collected during an inspection.

Car Dealerships using test-drive vehicles

Challenges faced -

• Poor conditions of the test-drive vehicle will directly impact the sales of the vehicle for a dealership.
• People picking up vehicles for test drives might misuse the vehicle and blame the damages on the dealership.
• Keeping track of the vehicle's health is a crucial process but very tiring and time-consuming.

How Inspektlabs solves this problem -

• Inspektlabs' web dashboard can help you keep track of every vehicle's condition in one place.
• This dashboard also makes it easy to track vehicle history so you know when the damage occurred.
• Every vehicle, when scanned by Inspektlabs AI, is graded based on the condition, making it easier to identify the usable ones from the ones that need repair.
• The company can also keep track of the vehicle's before vs. after conditions without dealing with a ton of paperwork.

Ride-hailing services/Taxi companies

Challenges faced -

• The driver's bad driving can direly affect the vehicle's condition and there's no way to identify them in a big organization.
• If the vehicle is not maintained properly, it will end up affecting the driving experience of the person using the ride-hailing service.
• Assessing the date the vehicle sustained damage can be challenging due to the extensive paperwork and reports involved.
• It can also be challenging to keep track of each vehicle's age, health, and usage patterns.
• There's an added layer of friction for the driver to return to the vehicle parking after every shift to get the vehicle inspected.

How Inspektlabs solves this problem -

• Automating the vehicle health tracking process helps identify the driver's pattern and vehicle usage.
• Since you constantly keep track of the vehicle's condition, you can easily know when it needs to be repaired to avoid any major problems.
• Easy tracking of the vehicle's before vs. after conditions can give you an estimate of when a damage has occurred.
• You can also easily track the vehicle's age, health, and usage pattern via the dashboard provided.
• You also enable the driver to inspect vehicles remotely from any location.

How Inspektlabs helps you save Inspection costs

Now that we have a better understanding of how AI can help automate the Fleet Inspection process, let's also look at how it can help you save money in the longer run.

Let's take an example with the following assumptions.

• You run a Fleet with 100 trucks moving in and out of your facility every day.
• Each vehicle costs you about $2500 per year for damage repair. These vehicles are currently being inspected manually.
• A vehicle inspector charges $20 per hour for inspecting a vehicle. Each inspection takes ~0.3 hours, and every vehicle is inspected twice daily.
• With Inspektlabs' AI inspections, you can save up to 25% on vehicle damages due to increased frequency of inspections and improved accuracy in damage detection.

With these assumptions in mind, let's calculate the average savings you'll make every year with Inspektlabs' AI-powered vehicle inspections.

The above calculations show that moving to Inspektlabs can save you about ~$84000 per year (based on the above assumptions).

Conclusion

Traditional methods of Fleet Inspections, which requires a lot of manual effort is not only tiring and time-consuming, but also a very costly affair, leading companies to spend a lot of $ for the process.

However, with the current advancements in AI and Machine Learning, companies like Inspektlabs are leading the digital revolution of this process and are providing companies with a holistic solution that can easily be implemented into the current process, and helps improve the overall customer experience along with saving companies a lot of time, effort, and money in the process.

If you'd like to know more about how Inspektlabs can solve your company's vehicle inspection problems, reach out to us here.