Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2019 - 32

ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT

Talking telematics
Telematics have become integral to satisfying these goals
and, importantly, increasing vehicle uptime. Navistar's
OnCommand Connection (OCC) system integrates a cellularenabled hardware platform with a range of technology solutions, including telematics and the OCC Advanced Remote
Diagnostics platform.
"Think about OnCommand Connection as a central repository for everything that you need, including the vehicle health
rate, the vehicle's location and a comprehensive fault-correction plan," Navistar's Chintan Sopariwala, VP, Uptime Initiative,
told Truck & Off-Highway Engineering.
As an open-architecture platform, OCC allows Navistar to
partner with about 27 different telematics service providers
who continuously feed the company real-time information.
The OCC portal works with any hardware available such as
Geotab, PeopleNet (a Trimble company) and Omnitracs, and
sends Navistar the data. Since fleet owners operate multiple
brands of trucks, an owner can see the real-time status of all
brands, not just International.
According to Sopariwala, OCC is in use on about 400,000
vehicles-40% of which are International trucks and 60% are
other brands. Each of those 400,000 vehicles send Navistar a
GPS signal and several other parameters including fault
codes, engine parameters and anything related to the engine
control module (ECM).
Navistar's telematics along with the new Vision 2025 initiative allow the dealer network, like Lewisville, Texas-based
Summit Truck Group, the opportunity to catch issues with the
trucks at the "sniffles stage before it becomes the flu," explained Justin Fink during the Navistar media event. Fink is
president and CEO of Summit Truck Group-one of the largest
OCC is in use on
about 400,000
vehicles-40% of which
are International trucks
and 60% are other
brands.

Remote
diagnostics
indicates the
severity of the
fault code-
whether the
driver should
"stop now"
or "service
soon"-and
provides other
information to
perform the
repairs, repair
time, parts and
training.

International Truck dealers in North America. Taking these
measures helps his team reduce downtime.
As soon as Navistar knows the fault code, there is a comprehensive "fault code action plan" for the A26 engine platform.
"The fault code action plan tells you how to do the repair, which
is the nearest dealer, the dealer's availability, and especially
when it comes to the parts it gives you multiple options where
to take the truck for maximum uptime," Sopariwala explained.
"It is all about uptime. As long as the trucks are on the road,
they're making money for the customer," said Sopariwala.
Although it's difficult to pinpoint exactly how much these connected technologies save in downtime, Sopariwala shared that
through a combination of different initiatives on both the parts
service and the technology side, Navistar has been able to improve the amount of trucks that are repaired in 24 hours by 73%.
"So today, compared to the first quarter of 2018, we have
73% of the trucks being done faster," he said.
Over-the-air programming contributes to increased uptime.
Navistar is able to push a lot of programmable parameters to
the ECM using telematics. "One key advantage is the truck
owner does not have to take the truck over to the repair shop
anymore. It can be done remotely," he shared.
There are several other areas where Navistar has found
telematics to be extremely useful, the supply chain side of the
aftersales or aftermarket parts division being one. That group
has built a huge data lake through its use of telematics,
Sopariwala said. "Data is super powerful and what we have
been able to do is most supply-chain systems rely on historical demand to predict future performance. Even before the
demand of the part actually hits, we are proactively stocking
distribution centers because we know that the truck is now
upgrading in those areas."
Discussion of Navistar's new Vision 2025 initiative will continue at this year's North American Commercial Vehicle
(NACV) Show taking place in Atlanta in October, in addition
to other anticipated news from the company.
Jennifer Shuttleworth

32 October 2019

TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

BOTH IMAGES: NAVISTAR

"We are fully embedding a focus on customer culture into
the DTNA organization. I believe strongly in changing the customer experience and I will continue to prioritize from the
top-down. Paul's leadership and team will be integral to driving this transformation," said Roger Nielsen, president and
CEO of DTNA, in a release.

Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2019

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