Dave Reed and Dan Weider, Fleet Management Consultants –

The costs for failing to complete quality PM’s can be staggering!  These costs are not limited to but include the following:

• Breakdowns
• Lost revenue
• Driver delay time, and
• An increase in your CSA score.  The HIGHER the score the HIGHER your insurance rating.  Do you know your CSA score?

There is more to a Quality PM Program than just the program.  If part of the program is being overlooked or just ‘short changed’, then you have sacrificed the quality. How do I know if I am getting a quality PM? How do I maintain the standards I have set? Can I do it better? These are great questions to ask yourself on regular basis if you are interested in running a clean, safe, compliant, and cost effective fleet. To answer these questions, you must first come up with some Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to benchmark for comparisons.

Are you using VMRS to understand what you are repairing between PM intervals?  What is your downtime attributed to?  If you are in the habit of doing a ‘quickie’ PM, does the time saved outweigh the time LOST to breakdown or repeat work?

Dossier is the tool needed to analyze your PM Program and help reduce your maintenance cost, as well as decrease your CSA score.  You will be able to drill down and identify the exact area that is failing, the exact year, and the make and model not achieving your KPI’s. Most importantly, you will also know if there are technicians contributing to these failures.

Understanding your door traffic and breakdowns is key knowledge when deciding if your PM Program needs adjustment. If you have one make that is in the shop more frequently between PMs than others, you can identify what system is failing. If a certain part is prematurely failing, you will have the information you need to determine if the issue is part quality, installation, driver abuse, etc. – and take corrective action. You will also have the information you need to file for and recover warranty claims.  And again, given that an employee is your most important asset, finding areas of improvement gives you the ability to coach and counsel that employee to improve the quality of your PM Program and add profitability to the bottom line.

For more information on improving the quality of your PM program, contact us at improvemyfleet@dossiersystemsinc.com.