When your equipment isn’t functioning properly, it costs your business money. Equipment downtime can idle workers, delay projects and negatively impact customer service. It also costs money to repair equipment that hasn’t been properly maintained.
In most cases, the solution for reducing downtime and unwanted repair costs is simple – timely preventive maintenance. Maintaining tools and equipment is much cheaper than repairing them after a breakdown. In fact, preventive maintenance is estimated to cost 80% less than the total cost of repairs. In addition to the repair work, you also have to throw in towing or shipping broken equipment to a repair shop, renting replacement equipment and the costs of downtime and delayed projects.
Bringing tools and equipment in for preventive maintenance can be a simple task. Simply create a schedule based on the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance milestones, bring in the equipment at the appropriate time and have the maintenance performed. But as any contracting company knows, many different obstacles can get in the way of keeping up with scheduled maintenance. These include:
- Maintenance records get lost or are not kept up to date
- Vehicles, trucks, and equipment can be hard to locate
- Projects often keep equipment in the field past maintenance due dates
- Without backups or replacements, companies may not be able to afford the downtime to service the equipment
- Drivers don’t bring their vehicles in for maintenance at designated times
- Finishing a project takes priority over servicing vehicles and equipment
If your company constantly struggles to keep up with needed maintenance, Tenna can help. Our asset tracking solutions make it easy to track location, usage and maintenance history in one integrated system. When you know the location of every asset in your fleet, how long it’s been there and where it’s going next, scheduling preventive maintenance for a vehicle, truck, or piece of equipment can be accomplished in minutes. More important, following up to make sure the maintenance was performed as scheduled can be determined with one click of the mouse.
A Proactive Approach to Maintenance
The first step in improving equipment uptime and reducing repairs costs is to monitor when your tools and equipment are due for maintenance. With Tenna asset tracking technology, you can easily gather that information whether your equipment is at a job site, on the road, in the yard or in inventory.
For example, attaching our heavy equipment GPS asset trackers to a vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port provides a wide array of performance and utilization metrics. These include location, odometer readings, hours operated, fuel efficiency and more. You can also collect maintenance information in real-time without the driver needing to get involved. With this information in hand, you can stay up to date on when vehicles, trucks, and equipment are due – or overdue – for regularly scheduled maintenance.
When you attach our GPS asset tracking to the onboard diagnostic port, the system can automatically send emails to remind you of upcoming preventive maintenance dates. It can also send diagnostic trouble codes to alert you to engine problems as they occur. This way you can bring the vehicle in for servicing before small problems become bigger problems that cost more to repair.
Minimizing Downtime
One of the biggest problems with servicing vehicles and equipment is that maintenance due dates rarely occur at convenient times. Unless you have sufficient backup to send in a replacement, getting the work done will always take precedence over preventive maintenance. By providing complete visibility of asset location and usage, Tenna asset tracking allows you to perform preventive maintenance at convenient times that don’t interfere with workflow or customer service.
For example, organizing assets by project sites – one of Tenna’s most popular features – enables you to schedule maintenance right after a project closes. Tenna also tracks which assets are currently in the shop for maintenance and when they’re due to be completed. This way, you can schedule upcoming projects more efficiently. Tenna even tracks the status of assets in inventory, so you can quickly deploy them to prevent downtime.
Get the Full Benefits of Preventive Maintenance
Keeping your tools, equipment and vehicles properly maintained does more than just reduce repair costs. It also:
- Increases asset uptime
- Improves driver/operator safety
- Maximizes the service life of vehicles and equipment
- Makes it easier to budget for big capital expenditures
- Reduces late project completions
- Increases customer satisfaction
- Improves cash flow and your bottom line
Without a good process for scheduling maintenance, it can feel like you’re always trying to catch up on keeping your assets working properly. Tenna asset tracking puts you ahead of the game by turning maintenance from a reactive into a proactive process. It provides the data you need to efficiently manage how, where and when your assets are used. And it allows you to perform maintenance when it best fits into your schedule.
If you’re tired of playing the maintenance catch-up game, contact us today for a free demo. Using a live video link, we’ll show you how to get more value from your assets by keeping them well-maintained and in good working condition.
About Jose Cueva
As Co-Founder and Vice President of Product, Jose applies his first-hand construction experience and knowledge to deliver innovative platform solutions to a growing number of companies. His involvement in both architecting construction-specific solutions and delivering them enables him to cross over functional roles.