Intercity buses serve longer routes, often far away from their home workshop or depot. Digital services have proven to be very valuable in providing constant quick and comprehensive information in the event of malfunctions or technical issues. Bus Data Center installed as standard in the MultiClass 500 provides continuously up-to-date diagnostic data on the vehicle for this purpose. Telematics services use the data to generate an overview in the OMNIplus ON Portal and provide it as digital services – available from any end device.

For a better overview, the individual telematics services in the OMNIplus ON Portal have been divided into four service areas: advance (maintenance and workshop), monitor (fleet management), drive (driver) and commerce (eShop).

With OMNIplus ON monitor, vehicles can be localised, travel times recorded and routes designed more efficiently. This is invaluable, especially for intercity buses. Transport operators receive valuable information via telematics to be even more economical on the road and to provide their drivers with optimal support.

An important aspect here is the option of documenting routes and optimising them where necessary. With geodata-based OMNIplus ON location services, dispatchers can not only follow the vehicle live, but also receive notifications once the vehicle has arrived at its destination. Or they can define "no-go" areas for their vehicles that should not be accessed.

By the way, the “Logbook” feature is already included when booking OMNIplus ON Tracking Services. It summarises all relevant information about the trip – from fuel and energy consumption to recording vehicle-related events.

Another digital service feature is the “driver card and mass storage device download”. The OMNIplus ON Portal allows you to download the driving times and rest periods of drivers at any time – without any further technical tools or interfaces. Automated download also enables transport operators to meet legal documentation requirements to read out the driver card every 28 days and archive the data of the mass storage device every 90 days. Particularly practical: the downloaded driver card and mass storage data can be easily transferred to an in-house evaluation system by a cloud interface (API).

Predictive maintenance is a major issue in the advance service area. The current service highlight is OMNIplus ON Uptime pro, which poses a special benefit to transport operators running their own workshop.

With OMNIplus ON Uptime pro, dispatchers and fleet managers always have full transparency about the vehicle status. Transport companies can proactively manage repair and maintenance management and thus avoid complex processes. Remote diagnostic information provides real-time certainty about the condition of the entire fleet without workshop staff having to connect the vehicle to the diagnostic device.

In addition, dispatchers can access messages from the driver’s display, making communication much easier in the event of an emergency. Critical fault messages are immediately interpreted and specific recommendations for action for your workshop are automatically derived from them. This means that expensive malfunctions and repairs can be prevented from the outset – invaluable, especially on intercity routes far away from the depot.

Another advantage of the system: once certain threshold values are exceeded or not reached, an automated error message is triggered. If a vehicle has reached critical status values, the system uses complex algorithms to calculate an up-to-date assessment of the severity. This helps the dispatcher decide whether the vehicle needs to be replaced and brought into the workshop. What's more, all Setra models built from 2018 onwards can be easily integrated into OMNIplus On Uptime pro.

The low-entry buses can be equipped with optional installation spaces and interfaces as required – as the perfect preparation for the installation of on-board information systems in the IBIS-IP or ITxPT standard. A universal data protocol is essential, especially for transport companies with mixed fleets or telematics and fleet management solutions from third-party providers.

Setra therefore offers the ITxPT TiGR data package from OMNIplus ON for all MultiClass 500 models. This new, virtual data interface enables transport companies to optimally communicate with all ITxPT-compliant systems at the backoffice. Another benefit: essential data points, such as fuel and energy consumption, are sent already interpreted or calculated. This makes data processing easier and increases added value. In addition, the virtual interface provides more data than the physical FMS interface, some of which has already been calculated and thus offers a sound basis for analysis resulting in more efficient fleet management.