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- Penske offers transportation services with a fleet of over 446,000 vehicles.
- The company uses AI platforms that predict issues and recommend efficient vehicle repairs.
- This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital-tech trends disrupting industries.
Penske Transportation Solutions is a heavyweight leader in transportation services, including truck leasing and rental, fleet maintenance, and logistics and supply-chain solutions.
The company, which is headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania, has a fleet of more than 446,000 vehicles. The scale of its enterprise requires highly streamlined and automated workflows within its operations, including vehicle maintenance. To achieve this efficiency, Penske has turned to artificial intelligence.
Solving expensive problems
Vehicle-maintenance issues can be costly for Penske and affect customer experience, said Sarvant Singh, the vice president of data and emerging digital solutions at Penske.
If a truck breaks down miles from its destination, "we have to provide a substitute vehicle," he said, adding that "the truck has to be towed" and sometimes technicians and parts aren't immediately available.
In 2018, to troubleshoot vehicle mechanical issues, Penske launched a platform called Guided Repair built with Hitachi, a technology and innovation company. The system uses decades of data that Penske has collected about its fleet and implements "prescriptive AI," including deep-learning models, to make repair recommendations, Singh said.
For instance, if a driver notices a check-engine light is on and brings the vehicle to a Penske shop, technicians hook it up to a probe and download its data. Singh said Guided Repair quickly analyzes the data and generates a recommendation, such as that a certain sensor needs to be replaced.
He said the system, which is now used on most Penske vehicles, has decreased repair times and repeat repairs. It has also helped the company collect real-time data from trucks, including geolocation, performance metrics, and fault codes, which identify maintenance issues.
Courtesy of Penske Transportation Solutions
As a next step, Penske wanted to anticipate and respond to maintenance problems before they occurred. The company worked with Hitachi to develop Proactive Diagnostics, a predictive model using artificial intelligence and machine learning to flag vehicles with imminent mechanical problems so they can be fixed before they break down.
Putting AI to the test
Proactive Diagnostics, which launched in 2021, combines Hitachi's "robust data-science capabilities" with Penske's "rich datasets," Singh said, to predict when a truck is going to fail.
An external device is attached to the vehicles to collect data in real time, Singh said. The technology uses AI to analyze patterns in fault codes and other fleet data and flag problems before they happen, which ensures trucks are repaired quickly.
The device also alerts customers about potential vehicle problems and automatically sends a service request to a designated maintenance facility to help them schedule service, according to the company.
Singh said the system saves drivers time because they can avoid vehicle breakdowns and waiting for replacements, which can be hefty operating expenses for Penske. By quickly identifying problems and scheduling repairs, the technology also allows customers to stick to their schedules and meet delivery deadlines.
Proactive Diagnostics is being used on about 150,000 vehicles, and Penske plans to expand the technology across its fleet, Singh said.
The results of an AI-driven solution
Last year, Proactive Diagnostics helped prevent about 90,000 trucks from breaking down, Singh said, adding that it also reduced the time it takes to repair a vehicle by 15 minutes to an hour.
The maintenance insights generated by Guided Repair and Proactive Diagnostics help technicians work more efficiently, he said. Technicians can accept or reject the information based on the situation.
"It's not about replacing humans with machines," Singh said, adding that AI had been especially helpful for new technicians learning on the job.
Looking ahead
Penske continues to develop AI use cases, Singh said, including building AI tools that allow customers to analyze their own fleets.
In April, Penske Truck Leasing, a Penske company, debuted Catalyst AI, an AI platform that lets customers' fleet managers automatically compare their trucks with other similar fleets to see how they're performing based on fuel usage and other metrics. This is traditionally a manual and time-consuming process that relies on industry benchmarks.
"The transportation industry is getting revolutionized by AI," Singh said, adding that Penske would continue to use emerging technologies to provide better customer experiences and make its work more efficient.