The Technology & Maintenance Council sure lived up to its name during its recent spring meeting in Nashville.
Between new product and services announcements, task force meetings, technical sessions and other presentations, there was lots of talk about the link between technology and maintenance.
Technology can be a great tool in your vehicle maintenance efforts but it’s not a silver bullet. It allows you to have access to more information than ever before and provides transparency into maintenance and repair events.
While technology can’t tell you how frequently your trucks need to come in for maintenance, it can help you spot failure and wear trends that will help you set optimal maintenance intervals for the trucks in your fleet.
Once you set those PM schedules, technology can also alert you about upcoming PM service and remind you if you fail to get the truck into the shop for its needed scheduled maintenance.
Technology can also signal developing issues and allow you to make more informed decisions about how to best handle a problem.
A key point to remember is that while all this data is great, unless you have a plan to do something with it there’s no point in collecting it. What you really want is data you can act on. Fortunately OEMs, suppliers, telematics providers, and software developers have recognized that need and are employing dashboards and alerts to only show the stats that fall outside your pre-set parameters. That way you won’t feel like you are drowning in data.
Not everyone loves technology but there is no escaping the fact that it is here to stay. If you have not already started to implement it in your operation, you should, if for no other reason than the control it will give you over your maintenance operation. And we all know a well-maintained truck is critical to your success.
