Innovation in the X5 Group is a process that never stops. It is a very meticulous, complex and multi-layered business: we are constantly searching for new ideas, test new hypotheses, and implement the most successful of them.
At the input we have a huge number of different ideas (both from within the company and from external contractors) on how to improve our existing processes and what innovations could be introduced into these processes.
However, only one tenth of proposed solutions successfully pass the proof of concept (PoC) phase, and only a few of them prove to be sufficiently effective during the pilot tests. This clearly proves: no matter how brilliant and logical an idea may seem in theory, it is far from certain that it will come out as brilliantly in practice and will bring any real benefits.
Nevertheless, all this is a completely standard process when dealing with innovations. And any failed experiment is, first of all, experience and lessons learned, which also help us come to successful implementations.
Today we will discuss our efforts and experience, based on the joint work of our transport department and innovation team. Of course, we will highlight some specific projects and share corresponding results. So, let’s get started!
Fuel consumption and its cost are some of the most important parameters that the X5 innovation team is aiming to reduce. Recently, we have tested 11 solutions in this area, we’ve run 5 pilot tests, but in the end, we are only implementing just one solution so far.
Five Projects That Didn’t Pass the Proof-of-Concept Phase
Gamification of driving
One of such ideas was a mobile application with game elements from third-party developers that controls the driving style using sensors built into the smartphone.
As part of the PoC, we asked our experts to drive their lorries with this application turned on and to collect statistics on their driving style. This led to the conclusion that smartphone sensors have large errors, and the application itself is hardly suitable for the Russian realities and cannot properly determine what to consider a sudden acceleration or hard braking.
A crazy scheme that was given a chance
The second example is a sort of an adventurism project and, as some of our colleagues say, a fantastic one. This is probably the reason we decided to give it a chance, since sometimes we also carry out bold experiments.
All in all, one of the contractors suggested to install small hollow metal turbines in the intake and exhaust of the truck engine, which supposedly would improve the burning efficiency of the air-fuel mixture, increasing the compression in the cylinders and raising the efficiency of the engine as a whole, thereby reducing fuel and lubricant costs.
A test on one of the trucks showed that absolutely nothing had changed. But we’ve gained experience and drawn some conclusions — we will not waste any more time and resources on such dubious ventures.
From questionable practices to alternative energy sources
At some point, we considered the possibility of converting the refrigeration and heating units (HVAC) in our trucks from diesel fuel to alternative energy sources. For instance, by installing cryogenic engines that run on nitrogen, or solar panels, which would provide solar energy for the HVAC system.
However, even during the theoretical studies, many technical limitations were identified: nitrogen is difficult to work with, and solar panels have different efficiency and are not resistant to aggressive environments on the roads (for example, rocks, stones, pebbles and gravel thrown up by other cars tyres).
So far, this project has not got any further development, but we will still try to rethink it in the future.
Speaking about something more fundamental
Since alternative energy did not work out for us, we decided to think of improving our infrastructure, namely, to consider building our own mini-gas stations in distribution centres (DCs) or procuring mobile refuelling stations to fill up trucks on our own during loading and unloading procedures (similar to how it’s done in the airline industry or in car sharing). In theory, this could not only reduce the cost of fuel by 7%-8% (since it would be purchased in bulk), but also eliminate thefts and underfills. However, after evaluating various financial models and weighing all the risks of dealing with fuel within the distribution centres, we refused even to pilot this project.
One that works fine doesn’t necessarily fit well
The market is constantly developing and always offers new products that could potentially be of interest to us in terms of fuel economy and reduction in depreciation costs. One of such examples is tyre pressure monitoring systems, consisting of a set of pressure sensors installed inside the wheels and a monitor for the driver.
Manufacturers claim that monitoring anomalies (excessive or insufficient tyre pressure, temperature rise, etc.) and maintaining the optimal tyre pressure can reduce fuel consumption by 5% and significantly increase the service life of tyres.
We didn’t have any complaints about these tyre-pressure monitoring systems themselves — they worked great, as expected. However, during the pre-project study, we’ve found out that the tyres mileage in our fleet is already higher than the market average, and since the same trucks are often shared by several drivers, this naturally means regular check-ups and constant monitoring of pressure. Which, in general, makes additional control systems unnecessary for us.
Five Projects That Reached the Pilot Stage, But Ultimately (or So Far) Did Not Take Off
Experiments with aerodynamics
Although we don’t have sports cars in our fleet, we still decided to play with aerodynamics, in particular, to install the air-splitting roof spoilers and aerodynamic body kits, which could potentially reduce our fuel consumption. We installed them on a total of 38 trucks, and then monitored the results for several months.
First of all, we did not see any significant fuel saving, and because of that we couldn’t say this pilot was a success. In addition, we received some negative feedback from our drivers regarding the body kits — in winter, snow sticks heavily to the skirts, and ice grows on the inside surface of the semi-trailers.
Light alloy wheels
After the unsuccessful experiment with aerodynamics, right now we are launching a pilot to replace the ordinary wheels with light alloy ones. Due to the lighter material of such wheels, we expect to reduce the weight of the truck, and thereby increase its payload, which will ultimately reduce the trip cost by 30%.
In addition, there is reason to believe that new wheels will have a positive effect on fuel consumption and tyre wear. But we’ll see the actual result after the pilot test, which is about to start.
Separation and cracking
In our pursuit of optimizing fuel costs, we wondered if we could somehow improve the fuel itself. This is how the idea was born to equip our trucks with fuel purification systems based on magnetic separation and cold cracking refining process. Potentially, this could reduce fuel consumption due to better combustion efficiency and more complete burn of the diesel fuel, while also reducing exhaust gases.
The pilot was carried out for three months covering 10 vehicles: we collected statistics on the fuel consumption, analysed the results, did A/B testing (we selected identical trucks, which were driven along the same route with the same load). However, we did not see any impact on fuel consumption and considered this technology as ineffective in our operations.
Tribo-engineering aspects
The engine is the heart of the truck, and we thought that it needs to be taken proper care of. So, we began testing various tribo-technical compounds. Such compounds are designed to reduce friction and restore the cylinder walls, which, in turn, should help increase in compression inside the cylinders, and therefore decrease the fuel consumption.
As part of the pilot project, we measured compression before using tribological compounds, then we drove about 100,000 km on test trucks and measured compression in the cylinders once more after that.
The result was quite intriguing: compression actually increased — with an average increase of 14.2% per engine. However, this did not affect fuel consumption in any way, from which we concluded that increasing compression does not directly affect fuel consumption.
One that works fine doesn’t necessarily fit well — 2
A rather interesting innovation for us was a system that, based on knowledge of the optimal driving factors (taking into account various parameters inside and outside the car), provides instructions for economical driving. Besides, it analyses how accurately these instructions were followed, as well as other data received from the truck. In theory, this should reduce fuel consumption by 6%.
The pilot tests covered 10 trucks; we instructed our drivers on how to work with the system, and then for six months we monitored how they followed our recommendations on driving speed and optimal gear selection. However, this hypothesis did not work out — instead of mere recommendations, drivers needed a full-fledged autonomous control of the accelerator pedal.
So, we implemented such a system. But it quickly turned out that from the point of view of economical driving, the standard cruise control installed on our trucks was as good as this newly implemented system.
One Idea That Took Off
Earlier we mentioned a couple of failed experiments related to driving style monitoring, but our failures did not stop us from testing other similar systems. It’s just that next time we tried an even more innovative solution — a combination of telematics and a camera-equipped advanced driver assistant system (ADAS).
Their task is to monitor driver behaviour, detecting aggressive and careless driving, and then help eliminate such cases, which should lead to a reduction in fuel consumption and the cost of minor repairs to trucks. During the pilot, we installed such equipment on 10 commercial vehicles, tracking and analysing the obtained data for 4.5 months.
As a result, this solution turned out to be quite useful for training drivers that lack experience in handling large load-bearing vehicles. Thanks to this system, they learn to drive economically and safely in a more quick and efficient manner.
Based on the results of this pilot, we formed a fleet of 30 training trucks in 7 macro-regions of Russia, used to help our drivers hone their skills.
Reducing fuel consumption is not the only area where our transport department and innovation team are joining their efforts. In the second part of this series, we’ll talk about finding solutions to reduce accident rates, cut down repair costs, and also about a seemingly simple solution that made it possible to speed up night unloading in our Chizhik and Pyaterochka stores.
