Fleet management is one of the aspects which determine the operational performance of a transport undertaking. An old vehicle has high operating variable cost on diesel, oil, spares and maintenance. Old condemned buses are also used by the State Transport Undertakings due to inadequate capital. Concerning the above, it has been felt that a detailed study of the fleet management of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) would help to identify the causes of such problems. Therefore, the TNSTC has been chosen for the present study. An analysis of the identified problems would help to propose possible solutions and suggestions. This paper focuses on three aspects of fleet management viz., fleet composition, test for equality of proportion and fleet utilization.
Fleet
management involves planning the operation, deciding the
routes and the number of vehicles to be operated, augmenting
the number of vehicles to meet the ever increasing demands
of the commuting public and an effective utilization of
the fleet. There are two aspects in fleet management, viz.,
Fleet strengthening and Fleet utilization.
Achieving
high productivity and optimum utilization of the resources
in the road transport industry, is not a simple task. The
overall productivity depends on the productivity of individual
factors or areas of management. So, the individual factor
productivity has to be maximized. The efficiency in fleet
management depends upon fleet strengthening by timely replacement
of vehicles and effective utilization of the available vehicles.The
transport industry, being a highly sophisticated service
oriented industry, works within a certain environment-external
and internal-which has a decisive impact on all the areas
of its management. Dominant external factors are the government
and commuting public; and the most important internal factor
is to make the funds available.
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