DUNTON STILL PLAYING A KEY ROLE
“It’s not a very popular topic to talk about downtime, so we turned it around: we talk about uptime,” explains Ford Pro boss Hans Schep, gesturing at the cinemasize wraparound screen behind him, which shows his team the live status of Ford’s 136,000 connected commercial vehicles in the UK.
This is the data display centre of Ford Pro, the newly hived-off commercial vehicle operation, in Dunton, Essex – the nerve centre for a rapidly expanding and highly advanced fleet management service that aims to minimise the amount of time that any Ford van or truck is off the road so as to preserve its owner’s stream of revenue.
Using the data on display here, Ford Pro can identify breakdowns and order parts and repairs accordingly, schedule routine maintenance for a time that suits owners’ working practices and – increasingly importantly – monitor E-transit charging habits to get a better understanding of what customers need from their EVS.
Schep says the system has reduced downtime in Europe by 50-60%, which he equates to a total saving of around $50 million (£41m) for customers last year.
“There’s a lot of stuff that we now make visible that before we didn’t even know,” he says. “And we’re very transparent about what’s on here: we invite customers here, we look at their fleet and they can see how good or bad we’re doing. We’re very transparent with them and say: ‘Look, some of the numbers on here are awful, but at least we know what they are, where they are and how we can help them.’”
Dunton hit the headlines recently when Ford announced it was cutting 1300 jobs in the UK, but the global strategic importance of Ford Pro’s operations here mean it will continue to serve as “the home of the Transit”.
Schep acknowledges that the job cuts will affect Ford Pro but says: “Our business is growing and we will definitely support that going forward. That’s a really important thing to keep in mind: we’re not going to reduce investments, we’re going to increase investments in this business.”