Breakdowns on a job site can cause major issues with meeting contract deadlines.
Unfortunately, no matter how solid a fleet’s preventive maintenance is, breakdowns are inevitable.
Technicians in the shop and on the road can use fleet management solutions to improve communication and streamline workflows to mitigate unplanned downtime.
Cherrylake, Inc., a family-owned and operated company headquartered in Groveland, Florida, specializes in landscape maintenance and construction. It supplies plant materials across the southeast US while focusing on landscape, irrigation, and construction projects within central Florida.
Some of its regional clientele includes high-impact and large-scale landscape needs from various businesses, resorts, and theme parks, which is why its mobile fleet is the lifeblood of its business. The company uses Fleetio and its fleet management software to help it organize all of its fleet data— asset utilization, equipment, maintenance costs, fuel efficiency, parts, and labor—while promoting efficiency.
Why Breakdown Response Planning Matters
Proactive maintenance can certainly help fleet assets stay up and running, but breakdowns and emergency repair instances are bound to happen.
Without a sustainable breakdown response plan, technicians are more likely to experience schedule disruptions and a build-up of broken assets in the shop and even at job sites.
Herman VanDenBogaert, Fleet and Raw Material Purchasing Manager of the Cherrylake headquarters, explained: “Equipment and on-road vehicle breakdowns throw off our schedule for the day, and that leads to costly downtime. We were having a lot of issues with that.
“We had operators going anywhere from one-and-a-half to two weeks without a truck. It used to be very hectic for our mobile mechanic, who was gone most of the day. We had emails coming through for repairs asking if we could send the mechanic out. He was always jumping from job site to job site.”
Before implementing fleet technologies to facilitate streamlined communication around breakdowns and repairs, VanDenBogaert said the shop would “have cases where an operator would just show up and say, ‘Hey, this is broken.’ If the mechanic is already working on three things and an operator just shows up and pulls the piece of equipment into the middle of the garage—that’s a problem. Not only was that way of doing things inefficient from a communication standpoint, but it contributed to the buildup of damaged equipment.”
VanDenBogaert developed a breakdown response plan that allowed his shop team and mobile mechanic to quickly address emergency repairs. The plan included standardizing assets, hiring an additional mechanic, deploying a tire vendor to handle the assets further away, using fleet management software (FMS) to input asset issues, and adding purchasers to FMS to expedite parts acquisitions.
This plan has allowed Cherrylake to reduce repair costs by 30 percent while removing the clutter of broken assets from the shop.
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Efficient Communication Improves Workflows
Clear, timely communication is key to any successful process, but oftentimes fleets suffer from communication bottlenecks that slow down workflows and increase downtime.
If an issue arises—whether at the start of the day or on the job site—drivers and operators need to be able to flag the issue and communicate it to management for a quick resolution. FMS and other fleet technologies provide a consolidated method for task-oriented communication, and users can tag people in conversations to ensure transparency and efficiency.
Using digital inspections in software, drivers can bring issues to the surface in real-time and communicate with managers and technicians directly from the issue created, including adding photos and comments.
This level of insight into issues better prepares mobile mechanics and shop technicians for unscheduled work by providing a more detailed account of what the issue is, as well as what parts and tools will be needed to perform the work.
Drivers can also create issues separate from inspections should something break throughout the workday.
Fleet technologies automatically track key data around maintenance and repairs, including data from daily inspections, digital work orders, issues, and fault codes. This data allows fleets to categorize expenses more accurately into maintenance versus repair, as well as track preventive maintenance compliance rates, surface which assets are costing the most in downtime and repairs, and highlight unproductive workflow processes."
With access to historical data in easy-to-read reports, fleets can get a better understanding of unnecessary downtime and how to reduce it.
For instance, you may find that a certain piece of equipment sat for a week waiting on a repair, but replacement parts were on hand and it only took the technician an hour to fix the issue. From here, you can talk to the technician and operator to see where the disconnect was, or if the job had been deprioritized and why. Is this an ongoing problem, or does it seem like a recurring problem related only to breakdowns and emergency repairs?
Automated Workflows Decrease Downtime
While improving communication and utilizing robust fleet data can help pinpoint process inefficiencies related to breakdowns, another way to improve workflows and decrease unscheduled downtime is through process automation.
Process automation allows mobile mechanics and shop technicians to improve breakdown and emergency repair response time by tackling everything on the back end, from work order creation to parts and labor assignments, as well as vehicle status updates.
When a driver or operator flags a failed inspection item or manually inputs an asset issue in fleet software, the software alerts all necessary parties, such as the lead technician or fleet manager, in real-time. From here, a digital work order is created and assigned to a technician.
Technicians can clock on and off jobs directly in the digital work order for accurate time logging, which provides a clearer picture of how long assets are waiting for service. Using a mobile device, technicians can add parts to work orders by simply scanning the barcode or NFC (near-field communication) tag.
Work orders can also be categorized by repair priority class as scheduled, non-scheduled, and emergency for more accurate reporting on service spending.
Another beneficial aspect of work order automation is that the software pulls in any upcoming services scheduled for the asset needing work, such as general preventive maintenance items. This allows technicians to determine if additional work should be done alongside the repair to reduce downtime.
Because this data is automatically recorded, consolidated, and aggregated in real-time and can be accessed through custom reports, fleets are better able to reveal costly issues, both in processes and with specific assets. For example, if an asset is having a recurring mechanical issue, its preventive maintenance schedule may need to be adjusted. Alternatively, the asset could be reaching the end of its useful life more quickly than projected.
“Data transparency—having everything in one place and being able to see that information [allows us to] easily monitor repair costs to determine why that number is so high for a specific vehicle,” explained VanDenBogaert. “Did we get a lemon, or is it the operator? What’s the condition of his truck compared to one a guy got at, or close to, the same time? Does he drive it home every day?”
To create a successful breakdown response plan that won’t tax technicians and cause broken assets to build up, you first have to understand inefficiencies in process and communication. After all, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know about it.
VanDenBogaert and his crew at Cherrylake continually look to fleet data to reveal flaws and improve breakdown response planning. “We revisit our breakdown plan all the time,” he summed up. “We’re constantly improving it, talking to management, and doing what works best for all parties.”
Rachael Plant’s automotive background started in auto parts inventory management. After developing and contributing articles to construction magazines, she moved into overseeing fleet-specific editorials in national trade publications and eventually joined Fleetio (www.fleetio.com), a fleet management software that helps organizations track, analyze and improve their fleet operations, where she has worked for two years as a content marketing specialist. For additional questions or services, email hello@fleetio.com or call 1-(800)-975-5304.