Thermo King establishes Remote Operating Center
ORLANDO, Florida—Thermo King now combines predictive analytics with a team of experts in a new 24/7, real-time Remote Operating Center (ROC) service designed to provide rapid roadside assistance for transport refrigeration units (TRUs).
By coupling technology with readily available human experience, the manufacturer aims to help fleet managers and drivers better protect temperature-controlled cargoes from unexpected—and potentially costly—breakdowns.
“Predictive analytics is the key piece that is going to really benefit the customer, allowing us to notify them when something might fail before it actually does,” Sid Gnewikow, technical service manager, told Refrigerated Transporter during the American Trucking Associations’ 2023 Technology and Maintenance Council Annual Meeting.
The new subscription-based, remote-monitoring service is bundled with Thermo King’s telematics offering, Bob Roberts, technical operations manager for Thermo King Americas, indicated to Refrigerated Transporter. Thermo King will station its experts at ROCs in Greenville, South Carolina, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, he added. Utilizing a “revolutionary” algorithm to help predict failures before they occur, the “team of friendly experts” will guide fleets toward the fastest resolutions to any problems.
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“If an alarm occurs, we can send the customer a notification,” Roberts explained. “If a ‘red’ alarm occurs, we know exactly how to manage it to the point of smart routing to a dealership, and one that has the capacity and the capability to do the work. So, if a failure occurs, and it’s a red alarm that has to do with shutdown code 25, now we can work through what’s happening within the charging circuit, and decide how to specifically transact it for that customer to make sure they’re taken care of in the most expedited way possible.”
ROC response plans are customized, and alarms categorized—from green alerts that don’t require immediate reaction to red alerts that trigger smart routing protocols—for each fleets’ needs, Roberts added. “If the customer says, ‘For these alarms, I want to be contacted directly,’ that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Or, maybe they just want an email. And there’s a hierarchy, too. We can say, ‘Send this email to this person, if it’s a shutdown contact this person, and if they don’t answer contact this person,’ until we can resolve the issue.”
Benefits for fleet owners and mangers who chose Thermo King’s ROC services, according to the company, include:
- Reduction in downtime
- Improved protection of temperature-sensitive loads
- On-road support that improves driver satisfaction
- Extended ROI and improved reliability of TRU assets
- Better leveraging of in-place technology to improve business processes and performance
- Improved sustainability by preventing in-transit food losses
- New benefits to offer drivers for hiring and retaining talent
“Putting older units on the road doesn’t have to feel like a game of roulette anymore. Our new data-enabled and predictive analytic technologies can help reduce unplanned downtime,” Roberts said in a news relese. “Behind that technology is a team of Thermo King experts to assess alarms, take corrective actions remotely, or guide drivers through remediation steps to get them back on the road and to their homes sooner.”
