A preventative maintenance schedule is always a work in progress.
From timing equipment services to allocating your mechanics’ labor, you’re constantly looking for ways to improve productivity, efficiency, and equipment life.
If you’re a fleet manager who is passionate about continuous improvement, keep on reading.
In this article, we’re explaining five actions to improve your preventative maintenance schedule—so you keep your fleet running smoothly.
Let’s dive in…
1. Rely on Quality Data to Drive Your Preventative Maintenance Schedule
By nature, preventative maintenance is information based. As a fleet manager, you draw on estimates to determine everything from when to replace an air filter to when to schedule purchases.
The problem is that not all information is equal in value.
For instance, let’s say you’ve tracked the average lifetime of your bulldozer’s air filters. However, you only have data on a specific brand operating under certain conditions.
But perhaps your equipment changes locations. Or maybe you switch air filter brands.
You’re now at risk of using immaterial information to make decisions for your fleet. Because the effectiveness of your preventative maintenance schedule depends on accurate insights, it’s important to improve the quality of your information.
For instance, Senzit is a predictive maintenance tool that’s equipment agnostic and helps fleet managers more accurately measure filter life. Our machine learning algorithms empower fleet managers with the data-based forecasts, like remaining filter life prediction, needed to minimize downtime and transition from preventative maintenance to predictive.
2. Get Visibility into Equipment Location
Preventative maintenance should be scheduled, structured, and systematic.
However, when you’re operating a large fleet, the location of equipment can sometimes be unpredictable…opening the door for inefficiency.
For instance, your mechanics may spend unnecessary time trying to locate equipment in the field.
And that can mean…
- Ineffective use of your mechanics’ billable hours.
- Wasted resources, such as fuel for company vehicles.
- Delays in completing important tasks on your preventative maintenance schedule.
The good news?
Thanks to telematics technology, you can leverage GPS tracking for your equipment. This allows mechanics to view the location of any given piece of equipment in real time—so you boost team productivity.
If your fleet was recently purchased, you may already have telematics capabilities.
However, the reality is, most fleets have older or used equipment. But even without built-in telematics, the right tool can bring GPS tracking to your entire fleet…regardless of your equipment’s age.
If you’re a Senzit client, your Senzit devices automatically bring telematics tracking to your machinery—connecting your entire fleet, new or used. To make sure your mechanics enjoy GPS tracking for equipment, be sure they download the Senzit app to their phones from the App Store or Google Play.
3. Have a Safety Net for Your Preventative Maintenance Schedule
Your preventative maintenance schedule is designed to prevent emergencies and take the guesswork out of equipment needs.
However, there’s always the potential for human error.
As an example, perhaps a Senzit device is signaling an air filter needs replacement. However, as a busy fleet manager, you’re overwhelmed with overseeing some major repairs to equipment. In fact, you’ve fallen behind on your preventative maintenance schedule, and you haven’t had time to check your Senzit app.
What can help you prevent equipment damage?
One solution is having a safety net.
With Senzit, we’ve made it possible to create custom alerts based on…
- Whether your machine is powered on or off.
- The dust load of your equipment.
- The engine hours of your machinery.
- A specific date/time that you’ve chosen.
- The remaining life of your air filters.
These notifications provide an important backup process in your preventative maintenance schedule—helping your organization implement predictive maintenance that stops potential issues in their tracks.
[Check out How a Predictive Maintenance Tool Can Help You Balance Your Machine Workload]
4. Work to Streamline Team Communications
When it comes to your preventive maintenance schedule, team efficiency is non-negotiable.
However, when your mechanics spend unnecessary time…
- Searching their inbox for information on equipment
- Calling you for information related to the day’s schedule
- Contacting other mechanics who previously serviced equipment
…productivity takes a hit.
While communication is important, work to streamline how your mechanics access the details of preventative maintenance tasks.
We encourage you to take advantage of any field management, productivity, or other predictive maintenance tools to improve communications.
If you use Senzit for your equipment, you’ll find our web app offers just that.
Our app doesn’t simply provide a central location for mechanics to access information on air filters. It also allows your workers to upload photos on the project for documentation.
5. Occasionally Assess Equipment Activity
An easy way to improve your preventative maintenance schedule is to minimize behaviors that make maintenance more frequent. (For instance, inefficient routes to reach job locations might be wasting your engine hours.)
For that reason, leverage tools that allow you to monitor productivity so you can optimize service intervals.
For instance, Senzit provides an activity history of your equipment—which includes the route and time spent on a given trip. With visibility into these details, you may discover actions that drain efficiency.
In turn, this knowledge allows you to recommend organizational changes that reduce how often your mechanics need to service equipment.
Transition from Preventative Maintenance to Predictive
From providing location visibility to preventing team inefficiency, Senzit offers fleet managers key data to improve their preventative maintenance schedule. On top of that, Senzit’s real-time data allows organizations to transition from preventative routines to predictive maintenance.
Ready to leverage Senzit for your organization?
If you’re a Senzit client, we encourage you to log into your web portal and check out our latest features like advanced engine hours, improved GPS, and filter comparison history.