9 Ways To Be A Better Maintenance Manager
Deborah Lockridge
Senior Editor
Managing a maintenance program is a regular juggling act. There’s preventive maintenance, breakdowns, finances, hiring, firing, training, motivating, safety meetings, new technology, analyzing repair trends, dissecting faulty tires.
And that doesn’t even take into account regulations from an alphabet soup of agencies.
However, it’s important to the success of your shop, your company and your career to take a step back occasionally and give some thought to ways you can improve. We talked with a number of maintenance managers at successful fleets and came away with the following nine tips:
1 Back To The Basics
The problem with a lot of maintenance managers, especially at smaller fleets, is that they really don’t know what their maintenance program is, says Darry Stuart, a longtime maintenance exec who now offers his expertise to fleets through DWS Fleet Management Services.
At one fleet with which he worked, Stuart says, “the PM sheets are so faded you can’t read them. There are 15 mechanics here, and none have been formally trained by their boss as to the requirements of the PM. So essentially what we have here is not 15 technicians and a director of maintenance – it’s one person filling a chair and 15 directors of maintenance. The only thing that is consistent is inconsistency.”
A good maintenance program, Stuart says, starts with a good PM sheet, and technicians who are all trained in its use. Before you train on the latest engine electronics, he says, “train on how to do the most basic principles of this business,” such as changing the oil, proper greasing procedures, load testing batteries, testing the charging system, testing the cooling system, axle alignment, torquing U-bolts, and checking tire air pressures.
"What you need to worry about are the things that will allow the highest level of customer satisfaction and vehicle utilization,” he says. “If the truck doesn’t start, it doesn’t go.”
Stuart recalls a lawsuit that resulted from a lack of the most basic preventive maintenance practices. A trucking company had a truck with bad batteries. It never ran at night, so they just jump-started it every two weeks. Then the load came that called for running at night, with the additional load of the lights on the battery. The batteries went stone dead, stalling the truck on a two-lane bridge without a breakdown lane. Another truck came over the top of the bridge and smashed into the back of the stalled truck, killing the driver.
"How much did that lack of preventive maintenance cost?” Stuart asks. “How much did knowing the batteries were bad – and not fixing them – cost that company?”
Ty Cross, vice president of maintenance at Ryder, also emphasizes the need for clear policies and procedures.
"It’s the responsibility of the local management to make sure they adhere to the established policies and procedures, that they understand them, and that they follow the correct process to make changes to them – not just develop on-the-spot workarounds.”
It’s also important to schedule enough time for PMs, says Bob Douglas, vice president of maintenance for strategic accounts at Penske Truck Leasing. “Just as important as getting the PM done timely and accurately is doing the follow-up repairs before the truck goes into service,” he says. Too often, shop managers that are pressed for time address safety items but leave other problems for another time.
"It may be something as simple as a hose rubbing against the frame. The hose leaks, you lose the coolant, you lose the engine,” Douglas says. “If your technicians have noted something needs attention, you need to address it before the vehicle goes back into service.”
2 Remember, People Aren’t Trucks
"Being an excellent mechanic is important,” says Dick Krivy, currently principal engineer with Hydra Rig in Oklahoma and former global maintenance manager for Halliburton. “But once [you’re] promoted to a management position, we’re going to get into the manpower side. You work with these people all the time, and now you’re their boss, and some personnel training is very important.”
Check with your local vocational technical school or college to see if they offer classes in management. Seminars on various leadership and management topics are available from companies and organizations such as the Truckload Carriers Assn., Efleetmgmt, the National Assn. of Fleet Administrators, the American Management Assn., and SkillPath Seminars.
"Some maintenance managers may be promoted into the role without enough training as managers, as leaders,” Cross says. “So there is some risk there in that – if someone was a great technician – the skillset to be a great manager right out of the box may not be there.”
A lot of being a good manager is simply being there, and paying attention to the concerns of those working under you.
"I cannot stress enough the employee link of being connected to your people on all shifts,” Cross says, noting that most managers work the day shift. “Make sure [you’re] present and concerned and [you] show the same level of attention on all shifts.”
Penske’s Douglas recommends promoting a team concept. “Try to remove that technician/supervisor relationship, so everybody’s equal as a team and pulling toward a common goal.”
3 Recruit And Keep Good Technicians
Your maintenance program is only as good as the people in it. Because of the shortage of experienced technicians, many fleets are finding it’s important to work with area vocational schools.
Some of the things you can do in working with vocational schools include speaking to classes, donating equipment, participating in job fairs and career days, setting up an intern program where students can work during the summer, and hiring new graduates. Typically, a company that has been involved with a vocational program will be more likely to get the cream of the crop when it comes to graduation time.
Bruce Stockton, vice president of maintenance at CFI in Joplin, Mo., spends a “pretty good deal of time” working with the area high school and college level vocational technical schools to recruit upcoming technicians.
"What we’ve done is try to develop our people from within,” he says. “We start people out that are right out of high school and put them in jobs that require less technical skill, and we really develop a career path for them and they work their way into trailer shop and tractor shop technician positions. We’ve learned that we have to find the people that don’t necessarily have the skill, but have the desire to develop that skill.”
Once you have good technicians, don’t take them for granted. Make sure you have a competitive pay and benefits package, and a way for technicians to advance. Too often, a company’s payroll system or corporate pay policy doesn’t allow for big enough raises for a technician who has excelled, so he ends up moving on to a company that will pay him more.
4 Embrace Technician Training
"We get busy, but we need to take the time to make sure all the shop personnel are up on all the latest procedures,” Krivy says. “Most vendors will take the time to send someone to train you at no charge or a minimal charge. The better trained people are, the better job they’re going to do.”
OEMs and suppliers are the most likely source for training. Talk to the companies you buy trucks, engines and components from about what kind of training they can offer. Look beyond the major components, too, to suppliers of items such as lighting and filters.
There are other training sources, as well. FleetPride, in addition to having its own aftermarket parts and FleetCare repair shops, offers a wide variety of training programs on everything from air brakes to air conditioning. The Technology and Maintenance Council has a Professional Technician Development Committee that has started offering technician training and competition opportunities.
Make sure training concerns are built into your staffing, so people are available to attend the training without seriously impacting the work that needs to be done.
While training on the newest electronics is important, don’t forget to review the basics, says Stuart. “The best training in the world gets dissolved from lack of use,” he says. Train on what technicians face most often in your shop.
"Every technician in our facilities gets eight hours of preventive maintenance training every year,” says Penske’s Douglas, “no matter if he’s a new employee or he’s been with us 30-plus years. It’s very difficult to measure the effectiveness of our program if everyone’s not doing it the same way.”
For a good standard on which to base your training efforts, look to the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, or ASE, which provides voluntary testing and certification for automotive and heavy duty technicians.
5 Get Out On The Floor
Stuart recommends spending at least 40 minutes of any hour engaged in what he likes to call MBWA – Management By Wandering Around.
A successful manager needs to keep his finger on the pulse of what he’s managing. Stuart starts every day talking with his employees and just watching what’s going on. Take a coffee break and spend it wandering around, always looking, always asking, always interested and accessible.
"If he’s constantly spending his time in the shop observing, and he’s got a junior guy that’s having trouble, he can go help him,” Stuart says. “A good foreman can tell just by the look on his face.”
Penske’s Douglas says probably the biggest mistake he sees maintenance managers make is getting stuck in their office, sitting behind a PC crunching data and looking at productivity reports. “They get so trapped inside that office that they don’t actually walk out and see vehicles that have come out of their shop,” he says.
"You’ll learn a heck of a lot more getting out and walking the floor than you will sitting behind the PC. The data tells you what happened yesterday and in history. Walking through the shop tells you what’s happening today – and if you don’t do something about it, it’s going to create history.”
6 Collect And Analyze Data
Maintenance managers aren’t just responsible for keeping trucks running – they’re also responsible for the bottom line. And that means you need to keep good records and analyze the information.
CFI’s Stockton believes a good software program is key to managing your preventive maintenance program. “Back in 1999, we invested in some software that runs on our mainframe AS400 system that has really helped us collect good data, based on the Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) codes that have been adopted by TMC,” he says. “That’s really helped us pinpoint and identify specific components and their failure rates, and helped us really manage from more of a preventive standpoint than a reactive standpoint.”
For instance, when one of CFI’s truck OEMs switched seal suppliers, the fleet saw a sudden spike in wheel seal failures within 5,000 miles on the new trucks. Not only were they able to identify the trend and go ahead and replace the seals on all those model trucks, but they also were able to bring the problem to the truck maker’s attention.
"The VMRS system has a very good cost accounting system in it,” says Krivy. “I implemented that system when I was at Halliburton. We found a couple of shop foremen who couldn’t read and write very well, but with a little training, even they got pretty good at entering the data required.”
You don’t have to have a big customized mainframe solution to run maintenance management software. Arsenault Associates offers its Dossier fleet maintenance software either in a traditional format or in an Internet-access ASP version on a month-to-month basis.
7 Measure And Improve Performance
"Many maintenance programs are built to maintain vehicles in a static environment,” says Ryder’s Cross, “but you want to continue to improve the program to drive efficiencies and increase reliability and quality.”
In order to improve your maintenance program, you must have ways to measure how you’re doing so you’ll know how much you’ve improved. Among the ways you can look at performance are the number of breakdowns, costs associated with repairs and productivity.
"One way to do that is to establish a baseline, say productivity based on historical averages that take out the very highs and very lows,” Cross says. “Establish achievable targets that have room for improvement.”
Rewarding individual technicians for productivity is one tactic that is used frequently in dealerships and in the automotive world. One trucking company that’s using it is CFI. About 30% of a CFI technician’s total compensation is based on how productive he or she can be.
"But it has to be quality work,” Stockton says. “If they do a job in an hour that pays an hour and a half, but they do it wrong and it has to be redone, they lose that hour,” he says. “So there’s incentive to work efficiently and work smart, but also to do it right. If we don’t have time to fix it right the first time, how are we going to find the time to do it again?”
At Penske, one of the things they measure is how many visits the truck makes back to the shop for repairs in between PM intervals. “We can tie it right down to if that repair was something that should have been caught during the PM,” Douglas says. “So we can measure the effectiveness of the training program of our technicians and the effectiveness of our overall maintenance program.”
8 Perform Regular “Audits”
No matter how good your maintenance program is, it can benefit from a regular checkup. That’s why several years ago, the Technology and Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Assns. developed Recommended Practice (RP) 526, “Guidelines for Shop Review Practices.” By establishing and maintaining a standard procedure to evaluate shop facilities, the authors say, you’ll lower your total maintenance costs and improve utilization and safety of personnel.
These reviews, also called a management audit, should be done at least once a year. The RP recommends that the first review by done by someone from outside your organization (or at least from another shop location), done in a team of two. The review team should look for good cost-effective procedures as well as deficiencies.
Dick Krivy helped create the RP. “We felt it was important for shops to have some guidelines to do a mechanical and physical ‘audit,’ ” he says. “There is a lot of information in this that is official – things they need to do on a regular basis and may forget about. Just having it all in one form and a chance to go through this thing about once a year is a good thing.”
The RP has questions in six areas. Where the questions refer to a more detailed TMC RP or applicable regulations, those are referenced:
• Administration – Are vehicle records reviewed prior to performing vehicle repairs? Do you use VMRS 2000 standards? Are employee training records used in reviews, compensation and career path evaluations?
• Maintenance – Are all preventive maintenance services completed in a timely fashion? Are manufacturers’ recalls being performed? Do maintenance history files indicate that quality preventive maintenance services are effective in eliminating repetitive and unscheduled repairs? Are special tools inventoried and a checkout system established for their use?
• Stockroom – Is the stockroom orderly and arranged functionally? Are random interim inventories being performed? Are low-cost parts charged out in bulk?
• Appearance – Does the facility present a clean and orderly appearance? Are only authorized decals and labels displayed on vehicles?
• Safety – Is approved personal protective equipment available and used when welding or cutting? Are regularly scheduled shop safety meetings held? Is a metal container with lid being used properly for oily rags? Does the battery storage/charging area have an approved eye wash and deluge shower?
• Environmental – Does the facility use proper equipment to control accidental release of freon to the atmosphere? Are spill kits available? Have employees who handle hazardous waste received hazardous waste management training?
Krivy emphasizes that the RP was not intended to be used to penalize anyone for shortcomings. “This thing wasn’t intended to slam anybody; it’s to see how we’re doing overall and what we can do to improve.” Going through this audit, he says, may help you to do things that, while important, sometimes get overlooked in the day-to-day business of getting trucks running and out the door – having your tools calibrated, for instance, or having regular safety meetings, or making sure oily rags are disposed of properly.
9 Change With The Times
You have to make sure your maintenance program changes so it’s in synch with the changing technology of your fleet. “Evolve your training, your tooling, your technology and policies and procedures as your equipment changes,” says Cross.
For example, Cross says, as engine technology has become more complex, it has driven a need for more sophisticated diagnostic equipment and procedures. Today, remote diagnostic capabilities allow technicians to run diagnostic processes from across the yard or even on the road, instead of requiring the technician to be tethered to the truck with a laptop or handheld diagnostic tool. “The technology continues to change with our vehicles, and it drives equipment and training.”
There are a number of resources that can help you keep up with the latest technology and maintenance issues.
There are associations such as TMC or your state trucking association (many of which have their own maintenance councils). The Service Technicians Society (affiliated with the Society of Automotive Engineers) has a Heavy Truck Group. The Tire Retread Information Bureau is not only an excellent resource for information on retreads, but on tire maintenance in general.
Truck and component manufacturers and dealers offer a wealth of resources, such as basic maintenance manuals, toll-free help lines, outsourcing options, help with parts inventories, technician training. Web sites can provide downloadable manuals, service bulletins, troubleshooting guides, training materials, parts information and more.
Chances are, as you think about how you manage your maintenance program, you’ll realize you are strong in some areas and weak in others.
"You need to honestly assess yourself and identify your gaps, where you can improve,” says Ryder’s Cross. “Take feedback from others, from peers, if there is a mentor that you have, and feedback from subordinates as well, and develop action plans around filling the gaps that may exist.”
