To help customers around the world better understand the health of their equipment and optimize machine availability, Caterpillar announced it entered into a technology and predictive analytics agreement with Uptake.

Caterpillar has made a minority investment in Uptake and will jointly develop an end-to-end platform for predictive diagnostics to help Caterpillar customers monitor and optimize their fleets more effectively. The new technology will be available for both Cat products and non-Cat branded products.

“Customers use our current technology for fleet monitoring and to track fuel efficiency, idle times, location and more,” said Doug Oberhelman, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar. “Our existing solutions are effective, but it’s time we take it to the next level. This relationship will combine Caterpillar’s world-class product engineering and design expertise with Uptake’s software, application and data analytics expertise. As a result, we’ll be able to transform the quintillion bytes of incoming data we see every day into useful information we feed back to our customers for on-the-spot decisions and planning purposes to further reduce owning and operating costs.”

Since 2014, Uptake has been developing locomotive-related predictive diagnostics and fleet optimization solutions for Electro-Motive Diesel, a subsidiary of Caterpillar.