Eaton releases map module for Fleet Advisor

CLEMMONS, N.C. (Feb. 2, 2000) — Eaton Corp.’s Trucking Information Services group has released a GIS-based vehicle tracking and fleet-management system that augments the company’s Fleet Advisor transportation logistics management system.

Called Tracking Advisor, the product enhances Fleet Advisor with a series of maps that provide vehicle and route information, the company said. The package is especially adept at generating status-by-exception views that show real-time fleet progress to dispatchers and route planners.

In addition to standard mapping tools such as Zoom, Pan, and Center, the software’s time-period and selective-pinging controls simplify the entire process of dynamically mapping and managing future, active, and completed (historical) routes.

Users can view route and schedule performance details at any time seeing color-coded status indicators that reveal exceptions to route plans at a glance. Tracking Advisor displays highway and street level resolution for exceptions such as early or late arrival/departure or extended route-stop and route-leg duration. Operators can drill down through sorted summary data to see the specific performance of a single vehicle, driver, or route, or the collective performance of several vehicles or drivers in a general operating area.

The system maps “breadcrumb” progress with controllable frequency of breadcrumb updates, and its open and non-proprietary GIS architecture provides the means to utilize source maps from a variety of vendors. Program access is very convenient: it runs in a client/server environment making it potentially available across local area and wide area networks anywhere within a customer’s enterprise.