4 Reasons Preventive Maintenance is Key When Gear’s Your Bread and Butter
Ask a fleet manager the secret to success, and the answer will depend on what’s going right or wrong when you pose the question. Some days and projects hum along without a hitch. No one gets hurt. Nothing breaks down. Fuel costs dip, and you’re way ahead of schedule.
Too often, though, there’s more hitch than hum. A wheel dozer goes belly up three weeks after the warranty expires. A failed attempt to better leverage the Internet of Things eats up valuable capital. An unnoticed oil leak puts your excavator in the shop, forcing you to rent one to stay ahead of the weather. Your foreman takes a job with a competitor at the height of your busy season.
Problems and challenges are part of the job, but that doesn’t mean they have to define it. When machinery and equipment are your bread and butter, taking good care of gear is essential to staying afloat. From lowering your total cost of ownership to improving safety, here are four reasons a robust preventive maintenance plan — and the softwareto carry it out — should be every fleet manager’s top priority.
It Will Save You Time
You already have strong feelings about unscheduled downtime, but have you really done the math on how much time you lose when a piece of equipment fails? A reactive approach to machinery maintenance that responds to repairs instead of anticipating them creates a domino effect in lost time. That lost time affects workflow and work quality, which — you guessed it — creates a domino effect in lost money. If unscheduled downtime is lessening your productivity, you need preventive maintenance software and fast.
It Will Reduce TCO
Equipment is expensive, especially if you’re working with heavy machinery. Preventive maintenance, however, can lower that expense by reducing your total cost of ownership. It almost goes without saying, but paying less across the life of your gear and extending that life at the same time will make you more money. Simply defining and committing to a preventative maintenance schedule reduces the incidence rate of costly repairs, while keeping your gear in the field for more hours overall.
It Will Improve Safety
Poorly maintained equipment is more dangerous, plain and simple. With construction, mining, oil and gas extraction and other machinery-dependent industries leading the field in work-related injuries and death, it’s essential every equipment fleet manager keep gear in tip-top shape. Under-inflated tires, a just-starting-to-slip transmission that needed oil two months ago, a track trencher with hinky brakes — all these issues create unsafe environments that can lead to worker injury.
It Will Reduce Stress
Be honest. How do you feel when equipment breaks down? Managing a fleet of equipment and people is inherently high-stress. Think of a well-designed, preventive maintenance app and plan as the equivalent of a company-wide massage. Because you’re stopping problems before they start, rather than chasing them once they arise, you and your team can focus precious energy and resources elsewhere. Your job is already hard. Don’t make it worse by waiting for things to wrong, because you already know they will.
So what are you waiting for? Leave that reactive approach to repairs in the past, and start taking a more proactive one today. Preventive maintenance will extend the life and money-making capacity of every piece of equipment you own, while improving safety, saving you time and lowering your stress.
Find out more about how GearJot can make preventive maintenance easy and automatic for you and all your gear. Schedule a demo today.
