Dede Car: Digital Transformation Project Summary with Software-Hardware Synergy

As the product lead, I spearheaded the transformation of Dede Car from a customized project to a standardized product. By leveraging "software-defined hardware + cross-device interaction design," we created an end-to-end fleet management solution for State Grid Corporation and extended this standardized product to provide a unified fleet management system across various industries. Here's a genuine summary based on the project's practice:

Project Background and Core Challenges

Background

State Grid Corporation, China's largest power service provider, faced dual pain points of "inefficient vehicle scheduling" and "dispersed driver management":

• Vehicle Management: Over 100,000 maintenance vehicles distributed across 27 provinces and cities, with an average response time exceeding 2 hours due to manual scheduling.
• Driver Management: 50% of scheduling tasks were delayed due to route conflicts or unclear driver status.

Core Challenges

1. Trust Barrier: Traditional enterprises had cognitive biases against digital systems, with a 60% rejection rate for initial pilot units.
2. Interest Conflict: The manual scheduling team resisted the system's launch, fearing job security threats.
3. Technical Gap: The company lacked hardware product experience and supply chain management capabilities.
4. Cross-Device Coordination: The need to achieve seamless interaction between in-vehicle terminals, smart keys, mobile devices, and PCs.

Solutions and Innovative Practices

1. Software-Hardware Synergistic Product Architecture

Module	Hardware Design	Software Function	Cross-Device Interaction Design
Smart Terminal	Customized in-vehicle devices (Beidou positioning + 4G communication)	Real-time monitoring of vehicle location, fuel consumption, and fault codes	Mobile app synchronization of vehicle status data
Smart Key	Smart key cabinet + facial recognition	Driver identity authentication, vehicle start authorization	Automatic pairing of keys with in-vehicle terminals
Scheduling System	None	Intelligent dispatch algorithm, route optimization	PC dashboard displaying global scheduling dashboard

2. Agile Development and Team Empowerment

• Iteration Mechanism: Established a "bi-weekly iteration" rhythm, focusing on one core scenario per cycle (e.g., "automatic dispatch of faulty vehicles").
• Training System: Developed a "three-tier training matrix": Management (value recognition) → Dispatchers (system operation) → Drivers (device usage).
• Team Incentives: Designed a "value visualization" dashboard to display real-time efficiency improvement data brought by the system (e.g., a 40% reduction in dispatch time).

3. Customer Education and Ecosystem Building

Key Achievements and Data Validation

• Customer Value: Improved scheduling efficiency and reduced labor costs for pilot units; increased vehicle utilization and shortened fault response time.
• Team Growth: Cultivated 3 hardware product managers and established cross-departmental collaboration SOPs.

Reflections and Directions for Improvement

1. Balancing Customization and Standardization: Established a standardized product architecture centered around "people, vehicles, routes, and costs," allowing customers to purchase flexibly according to their actual needs, increasing standardization to 70%.

Industry Insights and Future Directions

1. Deepening the Application of IoT Technology: Introduced 5G+V2X technology to achieve coordinated scheduling between fleets and smart grids.
2. Ecosystem Expansion: Explored the "vehicle-sharing" model to reduce idle asset costs.

Conclusion

The practice of Dede Car has proven that hardware product managers need to possess the composite capability of "software thinking + industrial genes." By deeply integrating IoT and other technologies with industry scenarios, we not only solved customer pain points but also built a sustainable business model. In the future, we can continue to explore the "hardware-as-a-service" model to advance the digital transformation of traditional enterprises into a new phase.

(Note: The data involved in this article has been desensitized or obfuscated, and some technical details have not been disclosed due to confidentiality agreements)