Digital Maintenance Tools: The Future of Fleet Technology
Introduction
Are you wondering whether to hop on the digital maintenance train or not? Still on the pen and paper, on the fence about switching? Digital maintenance and management tools allow you to solve these problems quite easily. Many systems also offer smart underlying features, such as equipment tracking and GPS, actionable reports, developer tools, driver workflow, and more.
With features like this, along with an easy and smart way to save thousands of dollars of revenue per year by preventing downtime costs, digital maintenance telematics is an obvious answer.
In the past decade or so, technology has been on a hard and exponential rise. I mean, in a couple of months’ time, the new $10 billion ‘James Webb Space Telescope’ will launch (which is an upgrade to the famed Hubble Telescope). Crazy, right? Well, in the heavy-duty market, we are making strives just as insane as this, but instead of space endeavors, we are learning about the necessity of digital maintenance solutions.
What is a digital maintenance tool?
A digital maintenance tool is a software or device used by many large heavy-duty companies to track, analyze, and overview many different aspects of a piece of equipment (or a fleet of equipment). Most tools aim to prevent maintenance problems from occurring before they happen, sort of like a Proactiv for heavy equipment. These tools also come with many features besides equipment analytics to give managers further control over their fleets.
Dialing in on the word ‘digital’, the whole premise of this tool is that you can overview your equipment remotely; anywhere, and anytime. This means these solutions have websites, mobile applications, or both. Instead of relying on pen and paper, you can increase productivity, flexibility, and have an overall much easier time when it comes to vehicle or equipment maintenance with a digital tool.
So, you may be wondering: “what do I get from this technology and how can it increase my productivity?”
Here’s what may be provided to you, as a customer.
What is offered to you?
Each company in the industry relies on different features surrounding digital maintenance, however, there are sizeable similarities that we will be going over to truly show what is most likely offered to you as a customer. These attributes not only surround individual vehicle maintenance but also fleet management and overview.
Equipment analytics and maintenance logging seem to be the overarching purpose for many of these competing software tools. According to Sandra Melo from ‘Data Scope’,
“When this data is processed in a centralized computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) powered with data analytics capabilities, maintenance professionals can have access to up-to-date information anytime, anywhere. Therefore, they can easily identify maintenance requirements in the machine, prioritize tasks, and plan schedules accordingly. Meanwhile, management can make informed decisions related to the distribution of resources or invest in new machines.”
Tracking your equipment analytics and preventing costly downtime is essential to the success of a heavy-duty business.
The next biggest feature, and is included in almost every software, is equipment tracking or real-time GPS, either through satellite or cellular data. Site and fleet managers love to have the ability to trace and route vehicles, along with keeping them safe on the job site. Theft prevention is also a must, with minor features added on such as Geofences, allowing customers to set boundaries on job sites and preventing workers or other individuals from going out of bounds.
The use of a mobile application is another crucial asset to you and your business, Sandra Melo states again,
“By using a mobile CMMS app, technicians can easily access all their tasks from their smartphone, which means they can complete them in the most efficient manner, saving you time and improving your ROI.”
Mobile application compatibility is used for not only keeping your workers in guidance, but it minimizes guesswork, reduces pen-and-paper entry, and keeps them connected with the technological world.
Finally, on the business benefit side of things, using these maintenance solutions is becoming more and more readily available to the public, both in a cost and ease-of-use fashion. This allows their customers to increase return on investment (ROI) and minimize overall equipment downtime.
Predictive vs. Preventative: Why Senzit is the right choice
With all these features offered to you as a customer, most of this revolves around the word ‘preventive’. Although it is very beneficial to be proactive and hit difficulties before they occur, do you know what is even more profitable? Machine learning and predictiveness.
Predicting when maintenance is needed or when there will be problems is essential for the future of the heavy-duty industry. Senzit HD has this option when it comes to your vehicle’s air filtration. With our condition-based maintenance (CbM) of your vehicle or equipment’s dust load percentage, combined with our predictive maintenance (PdM) forecasting your air filter’s health, you can completely analyze and overview a key part of your equipment and its uptime capability.
Don’t just take it from us, there are many other specialists in the market chasing this idea of investing in predictive digital maintenance. According to an article from ‘McKinsey & Company’,
“Advanced predictive maintenance (PdM), enabled by extensive sensor integration and machine-learning techniques, is one of the most widely-heralded benefits of the fourth industrial revolution. The idea is certainly a compelling one, and it is encouraging companies in asset-intensive sectors to pursue investments in digital maintenance and reliability.”
Innovative, essential, technological… yet easy-to-use and install. Senzit, along with the countless other digital maintenance solutions are all here to make your life easier, increase return on investment, and prevent machine downtime.
Make the change – operate intelligently.
All in all, a digital maintenance solution is again essential to the heavy-duty, construction, and fleet industry. Without these powerful and innovative technologies, we would be stuck in the stone age.
Senzit HD, a specialized air filtration maintenance solution, was the first predictive maintenance solution, utilizing machine learning for your equipment air filters. Our software is known for calculating dust load percentage, air filter remaining life, and following this up with many additional features such as real-time location services, digital logbooks, trip history, and more.
So, as a reseller or fleet manager, why not make the switch? Digital maintenance tools are the future. Technology is destined for greatness.
Sources:
https://mydatascope.com/blog/en/the-next-generation-of-digital-maintenance-tools/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/digitally-enabled-reliability-beyond-predictive-maintenance