Maintenance in the Transport Market: How Asset Managers Can Make the Process Easier
One of the main differences between a cost-efficient fleet that can deliver and one that can’t seem to keep up and control its costs is proper asset management. However, one part that often falls through the cracks in asset management is maintenance. Maintenance remains one of your most crucial and expensive operational costs and one you have to stay on top of if you want to avoid mistakes and surprise costs.
Let’s take a look at what asset managers can do to make the maintenance process easier in the transport market.
Look for Supplies with Lower Replacement Rates
If you want to make management simpler, you have to find alternatives to items that have high replacement rates. One perfect example is pallets. Trying to itemize every wood pallet is not only time-intensive but mainly useless since a large portion will end up being destroyed or discarded.
A perfect option would be to go with plastic pallets instead. Reusable Transport Packaging, for instance, have reusable plastic pallets that will last years. They have everything from stackable and nestable pallets, all the way up to beverage pallets, retail pallets, and even metal pallets. These can all be easily itemized, marked, and inventoried, making maintenance much easier.
Implement Replacement Cycles
Finding the most effective replacement cycle can be a challenge when operating a fleet, and there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration. Things like vehicle mileage variances, financial rates, the purchasing process, projected maintenance costs, incentives for new purchases or leases, and the resale value of used assets all have to be considered.
This is why you should always make sure that you look at your alternatives and see if replacement cycles could be shortened or extended to make things easier. You could also choose to synchronize certain purchases and so you can coordinate cycles.
Use the Right Asset Management Software
At the end of the day, having the right information and the tools to compile, analyze, and process it correctly is what will make the biggest difference in how easy your processes will be. Only with actionable and accurate information will you be able to solve asset management and maintenance challenges.
Using the right asset management software will allow you to have control over your maintenance costs. You’ll be able to have a clear snapshot of your ownership costs as some of the vehicles in your fleet start to age. You’ll also be able to monitor warranty coverage and how it’s affecting the total cost of ownership. All of this information will allow you to understand your assets’ residual value, look at trends in the new and used vehicle market, and see when would be the optimal time to stop maintenance and sell vehicles.
As you can see, there are tons of things that asset managers can do to make the maintenance process easier. Make sure that you follow these tips to the letter, and learn how to use the power of data to your advantage.