The United States Department of Energy has dedicated a website (www.fueleconomy.gov) to describe these strategies and their benefits. These benefits may be surprising to some. Replacing a clogged air filter can improve gas mileage by as much as 10 percent, not to mention extending engine life. Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration, and braking) can lower gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town.

Managers of commercial fleets are also interested in finding out whether their drivers use the vehicles in the most fuel-efficient manner. For example, do they take efficient routes between their assigned stops or do they make unauthorized side trips? To answer these questions, some commercial fleets have installed location-tracking systems, typically based on GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, in the vehicle or in the driver's handset. These receivers report the location of drivers via cellular communications. Such solutions, often listed under the categories of AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) and Fleet Management, also have additional benefits including creating incentives for efficient driving behaviors, contributing to workforce security, achieving better visibility of workforce location, and using it to increase responsiveness to urgent customer calls.

2) Find your way better along your route

If you can't find the best path to drive between the destinations along your route, you're not only wasting your own time and your customers' time, you're also wasting gas. Today's technology has gone far beyond printed maps carried in the glove compartment, which are difficult to use while driving, sometimes years out of date, and typically lacking coverage of the one area you need to get to. Nowadays, you can choose between many solutions. You may opt to print out the path for your whole route as you start your work day. You could deploy navigation technology providing maps and turn-by-turn driving guidance to help drivers to take the best routes. Even just adjusting the driving directions based on current road conditions is an important feature to have available.

3) Plan better routes

The above tips assume that the actual route for the mobile worker is already in place. We are told that the driver must stop at a specific list of locations, in a specified sequence, and we look for a way to use as little fuel as possible while doing so. This brings up the question: What if we could plan each individual route in such a way that fuel usage is minimized? What if we were to decide which vehicle should take which tasks, in which order, and use fuel economy as one of the key guidelines in this decision? This poses the question of whether we can move from managing fuel costs to managing overall travel, by doing the right things, with the right people, at the right time.

The value of this strategy can be much higher than any of the previously mentioned strategies. While it's true that the total mileage may be reduced by a few percentage points by reducing unauthorized trips and by helping drivers pick short routes, making a better assignment of tasks to mobile workers can reduce travel by much more than that - often reaching 20% and more. A correct schedule will meet commitments made to the customer and will deliver the right service in the right place at the right time, but it isn't easy to create. Some correct schedules are much better than others. The quality of a schedule depends on many factors, but very often a major factor is the total drive distance dictated by the schedule. If we can create an efficient schedule where total mileage is minimized, we'll be making substantial savings on fuel costs. Fortunately, there exist automated software solutions for achieving this goal of creating correct and highly efficient schedules.

Efficient schedules have many benefits. These benefits include: increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and reduced effort wasted on battling unexpected events and customer complaints. Given today's oil prices, the benefit of saving on fuel consumption has received increasing attention. These savings significantly affect the bottom line directly. It's also encouraging to consider the reduction of emissions and environmental impact which is beneficial to the planet and is sometimes required by government regulations.

And finally, there is yet another financial aspect to cutting down on total travel. When you travel less, you have more time for actual work - what some technicians call "wrench time". Often, the adoption of efficient scheduling creates an opportunity for squeezing one more task into each technician's day. If we assume that the completion of each such task is worth $100, then an organization with 1000 engineers will gain about $2 million in one year.

4) Avoid that second visit: do it right the first time

Sometimes the worst offenders causing the largest waste of fuel are not related to planning routes but instead are related to making sure the task can be completed by the technician dispatched to it. Whenever a task isn't completed, the result is the dreaded "repeat visit". Customers dread it because they have to wait that much longer for their problem to be solved, and managers dread it because such visits increase the mileage well beyond the expected costs. The calculation is brutally simple. If 5% of your tasks aren't completed on the first site visit and therefore generate repeat visits, you're driving 5% more miles than you should have done. And much worse, you're completing 5% less new tasks than you could have accomplished.

We have to accept that repeat visits cannot be completely abolished, but given the above calculation, even a gain of just one percentage point would translate into substantial improvements in customer satisfaction. How do you avoid repeat visits? By paying close attention to their causes and changing your organization's processes to reduce the impact of common causes. Using the Pareto analysis process, you may find that 80% of repeat visits are only due to a few types of causes and devise measures to address these causes. These causes might include dispatch of technician with the wrong skills, lack of spare parts of tools required for the job, or the customer not being at home by the time the technician arrives.

5) Avoid that first visit: early resolution

What if you could solve the problem without dispatching anybody to arrive on site? In most cases this is not possible, but let's suppose that 2% of your site visits could have been avoided by talking to the caller and explaining what needs to be done or just explaining that the situation, perceived by the caller as a problem, is actually perfectly normal. Now imagine that you could shave this down to 1%. Again, your customers will appreciate it, your performance indicators will be improved, your service staff will be glad to be rid of needless dispatches, and you might find yourself a bit greener than you expected.

How can we identify those problems that can be solved without any dispatch? Realistically, we can't extend each phone conversation by several minutes in order to cover all possibilities for immediate resolution. This would require a much higher cost of call-center operations as well as possibly irritating at least some customers with seemly simple questions. However, usually there are one or two questions that can be asked quickly and still cover the most frequent situations where there is no need for a dispatch.

If the asset or equipment that you are servicing is connected to the Internet, you might communicate with it and find out more about the problem. This capability is already common in such industries as medical devices, telecommunications, and electricity utilities, and it is becoming more prevalent in many other fields as well. This step of analysis could be performed by automated software during the call-center interaction, or it could be done later by one of your technical staff. This technique, which often goes by the name of "remote diagnostics," can help in more ways as described in some of the following tips. Asking questions and communicating with the device are both methods of starting the resolution before proceeding to dispatch. Even if you determine that a dispatch is required, these methods may gather enough information to predict what spare parts would be needed and how long the task is expected to require.

6) Use fewer spare parts

Does the following scenario sound familiar? The technician, facing the pressure of having to solve the problem quickly and fully, resorts to "shot gunning" or replacing several parts in the hope that one of these parts indeed caused the problem. Naturally, once the problem goes away, there is no time left to find out which part was actually faulty. All the parts that were pulled out get marked as faulty, and they all are sent back for refurbishment or to be thrown away. This situation can be acute. The IEEE Reliability Society has documented cases where no fault could be identified in 30%-60% of all parts sent for refurbishment.

Such "shot gunning" practices may be effective in terms of solving the problem but are certainly not efficient in terms of part costs, inventory carrying costs, and logistic costs of needlessly transporting, storing and re-testing good parts. From the environmental point of view, parts which are thrown away contribute to waste disposal problems and sometimes require special treatment in order to reduce the pollution from this waste. Even parts which are repaired and returned to the spares pool require transportation and packaging, again increasing gas usage and waste.

How can we use fewer spare parts and still be sure of fixing the problem? First, ensure that the technician with the correct skill set is dispatched to the site. Technicians who have not been trained for efficient problem resolution for the specific model used by the customer are far more likely to replace the wrong part. There also exist software-assisted solutions for raising technician proficiency such as computerized training, technical manuals accessible on the technician's mobile devices, and intelligent software guiding problem-resolution as well as learning from experience. We should also sympathize with the technician who has no spares for the part most likely to be faulty. In the hope of keeping the customer satisfied, this technician might try replacing some other parts. Previous tips such as correct scheduling (with the right skills and parts) and early resolution can also serve to reduce such events.

7) Handle unforeseen situations more effectively

In the ideal world of service, all technicians will have been assigned optimal routes, meet customer commitments, and have the highest chances of quickly resolving all problems. However, even in an ideal world, we know that each day may bring some surprises. Some customers will call to cancel their service calls. Others will call in with highly urgent needs. Some technicians will have to end their work day early, and others will get stuck in traffic or will find that what seemed like a simple installation task is going to take much more time than originally expected. The implication is that creating an efficient schedule is not enough. The schedule must be continually maintained and adjusted as these events come in to keep the schedule both correct and efficient.

We all know the feeling of working under pressure, putting out fires, and having to handle unexpected events while delivering on earlier commitments. It is very hard to achieve the highest levels of performance when we reach this situation. As a result, we will find that technicians' routes will be longer and will burn more gas. Technicians will get delayed only to find that the customer is not at home when they finally arrive, and spare parts will not always be available when needed. Again, we see that the damage to service-organization performance (profitability and customer satisfaction) goes together with increased environmental impact.

Help can come from at least two directions. First, the same software that generated this mornings' immaculate schedule should also be capable of continually adjusting it throughout the day in reaction to all those surprises. Second, you might want to review your processes and business rules to provide more flexibility in meeting such challenges. To take one example, let's suppose that each technician is assigned to a relatively small area around their home base. Within their region, they know most of the roads, and they may also know many of their customers. (These region-assignment rules are a great way to reduce mileage.) However, when unexpected workloads arise in one area, we discover the dark side of these rules. Unfortunately, we don't have the flexibility of sending other technicians to this area. Therefore, we should relax these rules while paying attention to the reasons these rules were created in the first place through some of the above tips. For example, intelligent scheduling can find the best routes even when there is much more freedom in deciding who goes where, and navigation technology can help technicians find their way in unfamiliar territory.

8) Reduce unforeseen situations through analysis and planning

The previous tip reduces the environmental impact of surprise, and although surprises will inevitably happen, we can always work toward reducing these surprises.

Imagine that as a manager you discover that you have too much demand for work and not enough technicians to get the work completed in one day. What do you do? You might call managers of neighboring regions to see if they have excess capacity. If so, you can assign some of your region's workload to their technicians. Problem solved? Yes. Meeting customer expectations is a top goal of most service organizations. However, driving from other regions to complete these jobs will surely lead to more mileage than the average.

But what if you could predict this situation days or even weeks in advance using forecasting based on statistical models, seasonal fluctuations, and input from marketing and sales? You could then apply these predictions to make sure you will have just enough capacity, in each region, for each task type, to prevent such costly discrepancies. Actions you could take to fit capacity to demand include managing overtime, training and vacations, training and certification, temporary relocations, and negotiating with sub-contractors to take up excess demand.

There are also measures that may be taken to fit demand to capacity. You do not need to passively wait for work orders to come in. Demand may be controlled through measures such as managing appointment-booking preferences so that you don't book appointments for a day that's predicted to be busy. Demand may also be controlled by the scheduling of periodic and preventive maintenance tasks to less-busy days, and also by negotiating with Marketing and Sales to avoid unmanageable spikes in demand. These capacity-management and demand-management measures result in many benefits including customer satisfaction, workforce satisfaction, reduction in work-intensive and error-prone crisis management, and - of course - a reduction in total travel.

If your service organization works in shifts, have you planned these shifts to provide the best size and mix of available capacity to the number and mix of calls expected at each time? If not, you're asking for surprises. Have you mapped the location of technicians against typical distribution of locations where work is needed? This analysis might show you that technicians are forced to drive too far from their home bases to where they are needed. These are just two examples of the kinds of analysis that can serve to reduce surprises, even out workloads, and reduce travel time and waste.

As mentioned above, remote monitoring and diagnosis can contribute to reducing daily surprises. For example, it may detect an evolving situation that might cause a problem if allowed to develop. Therefore, this replaces an urgent call in the future with a lower priority task that may be scheduled any time within the next few days, and therefore can be scheduled at a time when technicians are working on nearby tasks and thus requiring minimal travel.

9) Keep equipment in top shape

Equipment that is not at its best possible maintenance status wastes more energy. This has several types of implications. First, elevators, air-conditioners and just about anything else should be monitored closely (via remote monitoring if possible) and maintained more effectively if we wish to keep their energy usage at the most efficient level. Second, equipment that is starting to malfunction generates more environmental impact. For example, the leakage of materials from engines and cooling units, or ancillary damage to parts of the equipment caused by the initial fault which wasn't repaired in time.

Managers of technical workforces in electrical utilities are all too familiar with another implication. Assets themselves such as cables, generators, transformers, etc., should be kept in maximum efficiency, and old infrastructure should be replaced in order to reduce emissions and meet the rising demand. This is a goal of various electrical-network revitalization initiatives around the world which requires advanced workforce planning and management.

10) Measure, analyze, set goals, improve

In all of the above, it is clear that helping the environment goes together with improving operational quality and efficiency. Still, it is useful to define a set of measures that reflect your service organization's environmental impact. Often, these measures would already exist since they have traditionally been needed for many other good reasons. Examples mentioned above include mileage, use of spare parts, and repeat visits. Choose the environmental factors that are relevant for you. If you're not already measuring them, decide how you could collect the data. As you start gathering a body of current and past measurements, you can perform some useful analysis. Where is the impact felt most? Is it more prevalent in specific areas, or specific times during the week or the year? Can you figure out why? Software for Business Intelligence and analytics can help draw your attention to "environmental hotbeds". Now, follow the good old advice of management handbooks: set goals for improvement, implement actions to achieve these goals, measure how well you're doing, and repeat.

If these measures and analysis are important regardless of the environment, you may be wondering why you should add yet another category to your already-busy set of measurements and goals, but there are several reasons. First, you may be required to report on your environmental practices, so why not do it in a way that also increases service quality and profitability? Second, even when you aren't facing any legal and regulatory requirements, you can deliver a strong marketing and positioning message which will differentiate yourself from your competitors by the care that you devote to green themes. Lastly and most importantly, you, your employees, and your community will all appreciate knowing that you are striving to make everybody's world just a tiny bit better.

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