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Access in Action
NOVEMBER 2021
Service and maintenance workflow automation The care and maintenance of any hire company’s fleet is paramount to the longevity of the equipment and the safety of operators, but as a fleet grows, scheduling and tracking this becomes increasingly difficult. KJ Park, vice president of growth and strategy from Texado Software, shares their top tips for ensuring vital work gets done.
One of the best ways to mitigate the risk of renting equipment which has not undergone proper maintenance is to automate the service workflow with a work order management system which sends alerts to your service team’s mobile device. An online maintenance calendar can organise service intervals using different methods of automated workflows to let the team know a service is due. There are a variety of ways rental companies can automate service schedules to ensure proper maintenance and identify any issues before equipment gets to a jobsite, which generally comes down to the specific needs of the equipment. One is to set a notification based on the number of rental days. This method uses a set number of days rented per the invoiced rental time to determine the next best day for maintenance. For example, a filter and oil change may be required on a generator for every 30 days rented. By triggering notifications in your mobile and desktop work order management software, you can ensure your service team is staying on top of regular and repetitive maintenance. Notifications could also be set by the number of calendar days: This sets a reminder for longer maintenance intervals that must occur at specific calendar day periods. As an example, a scissor lift may be due for checkup every 6 months since the last service date, irrespective of usage. Equipment that is sitting in the yard most of the time, or out in the field for long periods may benefit from this notification setting in your maintenance software.
Alerting the team to the need for servicing or maintenance activities by a specific date is another option and can sometimes be necessary. For instance, a trailer may need to be certified by a certain date. Even if the equipment is out on a contract, a reminder would still appear on the maintenance report to inform staff to call the customer or to send a crew to the site for inspection. A fourth method used in the industry is number of metre units. Calculating usage period or kilometres driven are common ways to determine service intervals. However, automatically triggering notifications per equipment will ensure none are missed from critical checkpoints. A compressor might be due for service every 100 hours. If a company has over fifty compressors, that is a lot of historical review. Automating reminders at those intervals and reviewing fleet service history on a dashboard will provide much more visibility to the service team. Neither last nor least, you can set notifications by specific meter reading. Meter reading reminders can be critical especially for equipment that are under warranty. Setting an alert for 35,000.00 hours for a ride-on roller whose warranty expires at 40,000.00 hours triggers the rental company to act before the warranty period is up. If this equipment returns from a jobsite after rental, the service team will be notified so they can perform a thorough inspection to secure any repairs that can be covered by warranty before it expires.
Interested in learning more about how automating workflows can drive service efficiency, reduce cost, and most importantly, keep operators safe? Please email us at success@texadasoftware.com or visit http://texadasoftware.com/fleetlogic/.
