From Reactive to Proactive: Leveraging Data for Compliance and Predictive Maintenance
Fleet maintenance is undergoing a phase of rapid transition. For most fleets, traditional reactive maintenance practices have already given way to preventative maintenance programmes, but with the help of digital technologies, a new age of “proactive”, or “predictive” maintenance is dawning.
This proactive approach leverages data from fleet telematics and maintenance systems to predict potential maintenance issues before they escalate into expensive and disruptive problems, ensuring operational continuity, optimal fleet health, and compliance.
Before we start, let’s quickly recap the three types of maintenance:
- Reactive: Maintenance is carried out as and when a problem or breakdown occurs. This approach is highly disruptive and expensive in the long run, since unplanned maintenance can lead to service disruption, expensive hire costs, and long vehicle downtimes.
- Preventative: Vehicles are scheduled for regular services and preventative maintenance inspections (PMIs), either on a time interval, or based on mileage undertaken, as well as based on problems picked up via daily vehicle checks and defect reporting. This enables many minor faults to be picked up before they worsen, however some faults can still slip through the net in between inspections, and issues picked up through defect reporting will not have been planned in advance into the maintenance schedule.
- Proactive / Predictive: receiving EML alerts directly from on-board vehicle diagnostics, the fleet maintenance system monitors vehicle health in real-time. This enables the team to triage alerts depending on severity and potential operational impact.
The power of data-driven predictive maintenance
Vehicle telematics devices send real-time data from a multitude of sources, including the engine, drivetrain, instrument cluster and other subsystems. This data, when connected to a fleet maintenance system, helps you to quickly identify issues and prioritise vehicle repairs.
The benefits for your fleet are:
- Reduced vehicle downtime: With data-driven vehicle health insights, your workshop team can track vehicle issues in real-time, forecast and schedule your fleet’s regular service tasks and inspections, and keep accurate inventories to ensure the maintenance process always runs smoothly. This reduces the amount of time each vehicle spends in the workshop and increases fleet profitability.
- Improved Compliance: Proactive maintenance helps ensure compliance with regulatory requirements by keeping the fleet in optimal operating condition. The maintenance system keeps records of any problems that were picked up, either through EMLs or via the daily vehicle checks and defect reporting process, and how these have been resolved through inspections and maintenance work, so that each vehicle has a comprehensive service history.
- Reduced maintenance costs: By focusing on predictive vehicle health and monitoring fault codes, you can proactively attend to potential issues before they become costly problems or lead to vehicle downtime. The vehicle codes can also help your workshop team to quickly identify and locate the fault, reducing inspection time and costs.
- Extended service life: By proactively maintaining the vehicles in your fleet, you can minimise wear and tear and extend their service lifespan. This reduces the need for premature replacements.
- Improved Safety: Proactive maintenance helps identify and address minor faults before they become safety hazards, reducing the risk of accidents and incidents.
Proactive fleet maintenance with Tranzaura
Tranzaura’s fleet maintenance system integrates directly with the major fleet telematics systems, harvesting rich, real-time vehicle diagnostic data. It then translates this data into the insights that will enable your team to triage vehicle faults based on severity, and plan repairs alongside your existing preventative maintenance schedule.
Completed inspections, maintenance records and MOTs are stored instantly, recording the technician who completed the work, and the manager who signed it off. This creates a comprehensive service record for each and every vehicle, for simple compliance.
Speak to our team today and learn how you could reap the rewards of a proactive fleet maintenance system .