Here in Canada and the northern United States, seasons often change very quickly with little to no advance warning, despite generally reliable weather forecasts. Therefore, advance planning for the seasonal transition within your fleet’s maintenance and repair shop should be a key part of your overall fleet maintenance management strategy. Getting caught between seasons can waste a lot of time and money and increases the frequency of errors and omissions with respect to maintenance tracking; sometimes leading to bad decisions made based on incorrect or incomplete information.
At the core of your seasonal plan is a clear, detailed, and documented procedure for the transitioning of your fleet maintenance operations from one season to the next. An actual documented plan may seem like a bit of over kill by some fleet managers, but most often it’s these same fleet managers that get caught off guard and are forced to scramble when weather conditions suddenly change for the season.
Your plan should be reviewed and updated with each seasonal change and include instructions for reviewing inventory levels, maintenance check lists specific to the season, tires, safety equipment, additional temporary labour requirements, additional storage requirements, and scheduled maintenance. Don’t forget the seasonal equipment like snow blowers, lawnmowers, and other yard equipment specific to a given season(s).
Start accessing the plan early and have it readily available for updates when inspiration strikes. A good rule of thumb is to start looking at the seasonal plan, a season in advance. This is especially important when parts and inventory need to be purchased. Everything these days seems to be prone to going on back order and/or subject to shipping delays and errors.
At the top of the plan should be a review of upcoming scheduled preventative maintenance for your fleet along with checklists for each maintenance task. Having each maintenance task detailed in the form of checklists will be easier to manage and communicate with staff and it will be convenient a training tool for less experienced or part time or seasonal staff; and a review for the more experienced. A checklist will also enable better parts and inventory management; allowing you to know what you need for parts before the equipment is even on the hoist.
Fleet Harmony Cloud Maintenance Management can help you with all this and more. So if you are struggling to keep up with your fleet’s maintenance tracking using spreadsheets, maintenance log books, your memory, or another fleet maintenance management software product that just isn’t cutting it, it’s time to up your game and log on to Fleet Harmony. A Fleet Harmony subscription is far more affordable than you might think. It is quick and simple to use, is very comprehensive with lots of handy and useful reports, and comes with great customer support with real people who want to help. We will even help you migrate your data from your existing software provider.
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