Ground support at airports and air fields is a critical component in ensuring that airplanes fly on time, properly serviced and without mechanical issues. Airport ground support equipment (GSE) helps to fulfill a broad range of services for the aircraft, from cargo loading to beverage services to refueling to fuselage maintenance. To perform these duties quickly and precisely, allowing for speedy equipment turnaround, ground support personnel must act as a well-oiled machine.

Managing the control and usage of keys is a significant undertaking for anyone working in fleet management. Access to keys is critical to the execution of your business and protection of your assets, with the loss or theft of keys representing a significant risk to your operation. Anyone with the key can drive off with a vehicle, use that vehicle for personal needs, or otherwise mishandle your assets. In addition, losing the key to a vehicle takes that vehicle out of commission for the time it takes to locate the key or rekey the vehicle—a significant loss for your business. It’s crucial to effectively manage the keys essential to your operation.

Managing a fleet of vehicles isn’t easy. Keeping track of several vehicles, often of a variety of makes and models and uses, meeting out their use, and maintaining them over their lifespan is an unwieldy task, made all the more difficult by the need to control access to your fleet. A key management system can manage many of these challenges in an organized, auditable system that works easily across fleets of all sizes, styles and verticals.

Your fleet vehicles are your most valuable assets. It’s critically important to maintain them properly, keep them clean and protect them from harm. In short, you need to manage your fleet. And in order to do that, you need to manage their keys.

The recent announcement by Volvo to phase out gas-only car production by 2019, at which time all new Volvos will either be fully electric or electric hybrids, makes it the first automaker to commit to using only alternative drive trains. This announcement is just one of many changes taking place in today’s automotive industry. Innovative software apps that allow drivers to remotely start a car or monitor the battery, facilitate vehicle diagnostics and repairs through network links, and allow vehicle-to-vehicle communications that let cars on the road talk to each other are just a few examples of changes in new model vehicles.