I.D. Systems merges vehicle management division with Keytroller assets

Asset management technology provider I.D. Systems Inc. has combined the operations of its existing Vehicle Management Systems (VMS) division with assets from forklift management products provider Keytroller LLC and will host the merged department in a new facility in Tampa, Fla., the firm said Sept. 6.

Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based I.D. Systems acquired Keytroller in 2017 in a move the firm said would complement I.D. Systems' high-end industrial truck management systems with Keytroller's line of mid-range and economy products.

The Tampa site will open by the end of 2018, operating as a center of excellence for the newly created PowerFleet division. Operations at the facility are intended to drive innovation within product engineering, development, testing, and customer support, and to become an engine for innovative products for the industrial truck market, the company said.

I.D. Systems also said it has named Mark Stanton to be vice president and general manager of the PowerFleet division, after running the VMS business unit for the past four years.

The new division offer services that exclude over-the-road vehicles, but span nearly everything else that operates in a warehouse or truck yard, Stanton said in an interview. "It's not just focused on vehicle management, but industrial truck management; any piece of industrial equipment that companies want to monitor, control, or measure," he said.

The division will combine data collection, analytics software, and consulting services to help clients improve performance in areas such as access control, utilization, safety, and cost management, he said.

Stanton says those services could help DC managers get more value out of nearly any kind of industrial vehicle, such as: boom lifts, scissor lifts, electric or diesel vehicles, golf carts, people carriers, shunters, yard jockeys, yard tractors, pallet jacks, sit down forklifts, and counterbalance lift trucks.

"Forklifts and industrial trucks are expensive; that's putting additional pressure on everybody to make that penny go a little bit longer every day," Stanton said. "If you can squeeze an extra hour out of a fork truck every day or every shift, then multiply that by 10 or 100 or 1,000, it adds up very quickly."

By spanning a broad market of users, the new PowerFleet division will offer those services both to a 50,000-square foot warehouse facility with just five to eight industrial trucks and to a large DC with two hundred to three hundred vehicles, he said. In either case, productivity improvements could lead to cuts in the time, labor, and cost required to complete each shift, Stanton said.